Fundamental Forces Of Nature: The Story Of Gauge Fields - Hardcover

The book delivers what it implicitly promises: an instructive and thoughtful tour of 20th century physics, with special emphasis on the theory of the fundamental constituents of matter and forces among them.
--Physics Today

This volume is an excellent survey on gauge fields, which presents the relevant facts, people and events of the subjacent theory. --Zentralblatt MATH

Gauge fields are the messengers carrying signals between elementary particles, enabling them to interact with each other. Originating at the level of quarks, these basic interactions percolate upwards, through nuclear and atomic physics, through chemical and solid state physics, to make our everyday world go round. This book tells the story of gauge fields, from Maxwell's 1860 theory of electromagnetism to the 1954 theory of Yang and Mills that underlies the Standard Model of elementary particle theory. In the course of the narration, the author introduces people and events in experimental and theoretical physics that contribute to ideas that have shaped our conception of the physical world.