By the end of the 1970s, it was clear that all the known forces of nature (including, in a sense, gravity) were examples of gauge theories, characterized by invariance under symmetry transformations chosen independently at each position and each time. These ideas culminated with the finding of the W and Z gauge bosons (and perhaps also the Higgs boson). This volume brings together the key papers in the history of gauge theories, including the discoveries of: the role of gauge transformations in the quantum theory of electrically charged particles in the 1920s; nonabelian gauge groups in the 1950s; vacuum symmetry-breaking in the 1960s; asymptotic freedom in the 1970s. A short introduction explains the significance of the papers, and the connections between them.
My intention in this volume is to bring together some of the key papers in the development of gauge theories in physics, mainly from the 1920s to the 1980s. Inevitably, some equally important papers will have been omitted. The emphasis is on principles rather than applications. The volume is not intended to be a serious work in the history of science; still less is it a textbook of physics. Most of the ideas in the papers, so far as they have proved to be correct, are to be found in modern textbooks, such as [1]. Some first-hand accounts of the history are to be found in [2].
I am very grateful to Michael Atiyah, Tom Kibble, David Olive and Roger Phillips for their encouragement and advice. I also thank Ron Shaw for information supplied to me. None of these people is to blame for deficiencies which remain in this volume. I am grateful to David Grellscheid, Sakura Schafer-Nameki and Fabian Wagner for translating the German papers (though they are not responsible for any errors introduced by my editing).