Antonio Zichichi - Böcker

From 31 July to 11 August 1981, a group of 108 physicists from 75 laboratories in 27 countries met in Erice for the 19th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries re­ presented were Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Venezuela, and Yugoslavia. The School was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education (MPI), the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research (MRST) , the Regional Sicilian Government (ERS), and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The programme of the School was mainly devoted to a review of the most significant results, both in theory and experiment, obtained in the field of high-energy interactions. The outcome of the School was to present a clear picture of how far we are along the fascina­ ting route towards understanding the deep meaning of the natural laws of hadronic and leptonic matter -- the final goal being the unity of all forces.

In August 1978 a group of 80 physicists from 51 laboratories of 15 countries met in Erice to attend the 16th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries represented at the School were: Austria, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, The United States of America, and Yugoslavia. The School was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education (MPI) , the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research (MRSI) , the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Sicilian Regional Government, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. As usual, the Course was devoted to a review of the most out­ standing problems and results in Subnuclear Physics, with particular emphasis on the new aspects; there were mainly two: supersymmetry and electroweak interactions. In his famous lecture at Erice in 1967, Sid Coleman reviewed "All possible symmetries of the S matrix. " All but one, namely that which tells you: if you have a fermion you must have a boson. This is super symmetry , and this produces the superspace, i. e. an entity which has not only the Einstein-"bosonic" coordinates, but also "fermionic" coordinates. From superspace we get supergravity; and this means that one day we should be able to detect not only the graviton (with spin 2) but also the gravitino (spin 3/2). If we add "flavour", "colour", and "family" as other intrinsic degrees of freedom, we get extended supergravity.

During July and August of 1976 a group of 90 physicists from 56 laboratories in 21 countries met in Erice for the 14th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics. The countries represented were Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, the German Democratic Republic, Greece, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia. The School was sponsored by the Italian Ministry of Public Education (MPI), the Italian Ministry of Scientific and Technological Research (MRST), the North Atlantic Treaty Organi­ zation (NATO), the Regional Sicilian Government (ERS), and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The program of the School was mainly devoted to the elucida­ tion and discussion of the progress achieved in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the fundamental constituents of matter. On the theoretical front we had a series of remarkable lecturers (C. N. Yang, S. Weinberg, G. C. Wick) attempting a description of finite size particles. Another group of lecturers covered such topics as the understanding of the new particles (H. J. Lipkin), whether or not jets really exist (E. Lillethun), and the unexpected A-dependence of massive dileptons produced in high-energy proton-­ nucleus collisions (J. W. Cronin). Two other outstanding questions were covered by E. Leader and G. Preparata respectively: whether strong interactions are still within the Regge framework, and if it is really possible to master strong interactions. A. J. S.