A comprehensive overview of modern particle physics, which seeks to be accessible to anyone with a true passion for wanting to know how the universe works. We are introduced to the known particles of the world we live in. An explanation of quantum mechanics and relativity paves the way for an understanding of the laws that govern particle physics. These laws are put into action in the world of accelerators, colliders and detectors found at institutions such as CERN and Fermilab that are in the forefront of technical innovation. Real world and theory meet, with the use of Feynman diagrams to solve the problems of infinities and deduce the need for the Higgs boson. The volume offers insight from an eyewitness and participant in some of the greatest discoveries in 20th-century science. From Einstein's theory of relativity to the elusive Higgs particle, the text should interest anyone interested in the world of quarks, leptons and gauge theories. The work also contains many thumbnail sketches of particle physics personalities, including contemporaries as seen through the eyes of the author. Illustrated with pictures, these candid sketches present views of the characters that populate the field.

Martinus Justinus Godefriedus Veltman (born June 27, 1931 in Waalwijk) is a Dutch theoretical physicist. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in physics with his former student Gerardus 't Hooft for their work on particle theory.