The urge to reduce the seemingly infinite variety and complexity of the visible world to some aesthetically satisfactory order has been a part of man's intellectual life since ancient times. In ancient philosophy and in modern science the natural orientation of this drive has been in the direction of understanding this variety and complexity as the natural outcome of the enormous number of combinatorial possibilities available to even a small number of basic entities subject to fixed laws of behavior. The search for these basic entities and for the strict formulation of the laws which govern them is still very much the essential fabric of physics today.

1.
Two popular expositions of present knowledge and trends in elementary‐particle physics which may be useful as background reading on this subject for the nonspecialist are: M. Gell‐Mann, “Particles and Principles”, Physics Today, November 1964, p. 22,
and G. F. Chew, M. Gell‐Mann, and A. H. Rosenfeld, “Strongly Interacting Particles”, Scientific American, February 1964, p. 74.
A more technical review of elementary‐particle symmetries, but not including the more recent SU (6)‐induced symmetries, is contained in
R. E.
Cutkosky
, “
Symmetries Among the Strongly Interacting Particles
”,
Ann. Rev. Nucl. Sci.
,
14
,
175
(
1964
).
2.
For a recent review of experimental data on electromagnetic form factors of nucleons and their theoretical analysis, see
R. R.
Wilson
and
J. S.
Levinger
, “
Structure of the Proton
”,
Ann. Rev. Nucl. Sci.
,
14
,
135
(
1964
).
3.
Some recent work in peripheral reactions is discussed in the article “Peripheral Production and Decay Correlations of Resonances” by
J. D.
Jackson
,
Revs. Modern Phys.
,
37
,
484
(
1965
).
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