UNIFIED THEORY -- Electroweak

1967-1970

Glashow, Salem, and Weinberg proposed a theory that unifies electromagneti and weak interactions.

They predicted the mass of the W boson which mediates weak processes such as beta decay and predicted a new type of weak interaction and its mediating particle the Z boson. Evidence for this new type of process was soon found. They also predicted the Higgs Boson.

1979

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Glashow, Salem, and Weinberg for their role in the development of the electroweak theory, four years before the discovery of the W and Z bosons!

1983

The W and Z bosons were finally discovered in 1983 by the UA-1 and UA-2 experiments at CERN.

These discoveries dramatically confirmed the Standard Model. Detectors at today's accelerators have observed over 100,000 W's and millions of Z's.