Quarks: From Paradox to Myth

Abstract

In the past few years the dry and dusty subject of quantum field theory has come alive, like a desert suddenly blooming with flowers. Theorists have been overwhelmed by the unexpected lushness of field theory; they are now experimenting with the many new ideas that have been discovered. The experimentation involves a lot of study of model field theories which illustrate various ideas without being relevant to the real world. This is especially true of the one space, one time dimensional models which will be discussed by several lecturers. In time, theorists will learn which ideas are the most promising and will develop them to the point where one can make new experimental predictions; this will require several years probably. The present theoretical activity is similar to the activity around 1960 when Lie groups and partially conserved currents were discovered by theorists but they did not have SU(3) and SU(2) x SU(2) worked out in detail.