This book provides a comprehensive overview of modern particle physics accessible to anyone with a true passion for wanting to know how the universe works.
Martinus Veltman, born in 1931 in Waalwijk, the Netherlands, studied at the University of Utrecht. He started as a fellow at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, and later became Professor of Theoretical Physics in Utrecht. Together with his then student 't Hooft he developed the mathematical implementation of gauge theories. In 1977 he deduced an equation that allowed a prediction of the mass of the top quark. In 1981 he accepted a position at the University of Michigan. After retirement he moved back to the Netherlands. The top quark with a mass as predicted was found at Fermilab in 1995, and in 1999 't Hooft and Veltman were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics".
