May 5, 2011

"Charming" anniversary

Thirty-five years ago, in early May, charmed mesons were discovered at SPEAR by a SLAC-LBL group. On May 3 Gerson Goldhaber began to see a narrow peak at 1.87 GeV while François Pierre saw a similar spike in another graph. On May 5 they sent around a joint memorandum to the collaboration. On May 8 Goldhaber phoned Sheldon Glashow, one of the principal founding fathers of charm, to inform him of the evidence in confidence. On June 8, the group issued a press release to announce that the long-sought "charmed" particle had been found.

Text of June 8, 1976 press release, SLAC Beam Line, June 1976, p.2

The Hunting of the Quark, Sheldon Glashow, SLAC Beam Line, September 1976, p.Q-1

The Hunting of the Quark: A True Story of Modern Physics, Michael Riordan, Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1987, p.317-321

By Laura O'Hara, Assistant Archivist

Sheldon Glashow Particle Chart 1976 — Elementary particles chart accompanying Sheldon Glashow article "The Hunting of the Quark" in the September 1976 SLAC Beamline.
(Reprinted from the 1975 New York Times newspaper). (Standard Model in Particle Physics.) *(New York Times)*