ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Italy, China, and the USSR at the Particle Zoo: Uneven Reception of Antihyperon Discoveries at the Dawn of the Standard Model

• In Event: Developments in the History of Particle Physics

English Abstract

The late 1950s and early 1960s marked a defining moment in the history of particle physics, when the expanding “particle zoo” heralded new classificatory schemes that would eventually converge in the Standard Model. This paper examines the nearly simultaneous discoveries of antihyperons in Rome and in Dubna — respectively the anti-sigma-plus and the anti-sigma-minus — as a revealing episode of shifting perspectives in high-energy physics during the Cold War. The anti-sigma-plus observed by Edoardo Amaldi’s group at Sapienza University (1959–60) emerged within a transnational network connected to Berkeley’s Bevatron. Scientifically significant, it nonetheless received limited international recognition and left little institutional legacy. By contrast, the anti-sigma-minus announced by a Soviet-Chinese collaboration led by Vladimir Veksler and Wang Ganchang at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) became a vehicle for scientific, national and political prestige. By tracing conference presentations, correspondence, publications, and media reception, the paper shows how two parallel experimental achievements were embedded in asymmetrical structures of visibility, credit, and legitimacy.

Author

• Adele La Rana, Sapienza University of Rome