Family Matters

Abstract

Quarks and leptons, the fundamental building blocks of the subatomic world, manifest in three families - replicas with identical quantum numbers that differ only in their masses. After revisiting the key milestones that led to the discovery of this peculiar structure, a non-technical overview is presented of the main attempts to explain its origin and trace it back to an as-yet-unknown fundamental principle.

Comments: English version of an article submitted to Il Nuovo Saggiatore