Electronic Journals and Electronic Publishing at CERN: A Case Study
D. Dallman · CERN Document Server (European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2002
Particle physics as a distinct field of physics is generally considered to have begun in the last decade of the 19 century with the discoveries of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel (1895) and the electron by J.J.Thomson (1897). Even after more than 100 years of further research in which much finer sub-structure has been found in many so-called “elementary” particle systems (such as nuclei and hadrons), it is ironic that the electron is still elementary even at today’s level of understanding. The order of discoveries is not necessarily a steady progression from complex to simple.