The quest to assemble the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, a comprehensive picture of nearly all known forces and bits of matter, is one of humanity’s greatest intellectual triumphs. It is an epic story that unfolded over half a century through several intersecting plot lines. One of the most critical and difficult was the effort to “renormalize” the theory—to eliminate an acute and seemingly ineradicable mathematical defect in which the theory did not produce real numbers when used to make calculations but rather infinities. Many accounts of the Standard Model aimed at general readers, afraid of boring or losing the reader with mathematical complexities, either hand-wave or shirk this important part of the story. So much more exciting to talk about experiments and discoveries! In this ambitious book, Close bravely center-stages this most complex part of the epic.
Readers who are not physicists could be forgiven for being apprehensive....
