Princeton University Donald R. Hamilton Lecture

Abstract: The concept that there may exist symmetries relating bosons and fermions was first proposed by Yuri Golfand and Evgeny Likhtman in 1971 and independently realized by Julius Wess and Bruno Zumino in 1974. Thus, was born the topic of ‘supersymmetry’ and the speaker will highlight the triumphs and tragedies of this yet to be observationally validated mathematical idea and describe a scientific quest via a personal retrospective.