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Raoul Gatto and Bruno Touschek's collaboration in the establishment of electron positron colliders as a fundamental discovery tool in particle physics will be illustrated. In particular, we will tell the little-known story of how Gatto and Touschek's pioneering vision combined to provide the theoretical foundations for AdA, the first matter-antimatter collider, and how their friendship with Wolfgang Pauli and Gerhard L\"uders was crucial to their understanding of the CPT theorem, the basis for AdA's success. We will see how these two exceptional scientists shaped physics between Rome and Frascati, from the proposal to build AdA and, soon after in 1961, the larger machine ADONE, to the discovery of the $J/\Psi$ particle in 1974. We will also highlight Gatto and Touschek's contribution in mentoring an extraordinary cohort of students and collaborators whose work contributed to the renaissance of Italian theoretical physics after the Second World War and to the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics., Comment: 69 pages, 29 figures, 3 appendices, doubling the previous version in number of pages, many more figures and added bibliography, enlarging version1 to incorporate Gatto and Touschek's legacy beyond AdA with extra sections about ADONE, the development of the Frascati Laboratory theory group, the appearance of multihadron production and the confirmation of the American discovery of the J/Psi

The 100th anniversary of Bruno Touschek's birth also marks 60 years since the first beams of electrons and positrons circulated in AdA, the first ever matter-antimatter collider built in Frascati National Laboratories following Touschek's visionary proposal of February 1960. A brief biography, an extensive bibliography, and a description of archives containing documents related to the life and science of the father of electron-positron physics are presented., Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. Enlarged version with added photos and drawings

In the history of the discovery tools of last century particle physics, central stage is taken by elementary particle accelerators and in particular by colliders. In their start and early development, a major role was played by the Austrian born Bruno Touschek, who proposed and built the first electron positron collider, AdA, in Italy, in 1960. In this note, we present a period of Touschek's life barely explored in the literature, namely the five years he spent at University of Glasgow, first to obtain his doctorate in 1949 and then as a lecturer. We shall highlight his formation as a theoretical physicist, his contacts and correspondence with Werner Heisenberg in G\"ottingen and Max Born in Edinburgh, as well as his close involvement with colleagues intent on building modern particle accelerators in Glasgow, Malvern, Manchester and Birmingham. We shall discuss how the Fuchs affair, which unraveled in early 1950, may have influenced his decision to leave the UK, and how contacts with the Italian physicist Bruno Ferretti led Touschek to join the Guglielmo Marconi Physics Institute of University of Rome in January 1953., Comment: 67 pages, 29 figures

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary since the beginning of the search for gravitational waves at the Max Planck Society, and in coincidence with the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Albert Einstein Institute, we explore the interplay between the renaissance of general relativity and the advent of relativistic astrophysics following the German early involvement in gravitational-wave research, to the point when gravitational-wave detection became established by the appearance of full-scale detectors and international collaborations. On the background of the spectacular astrophysical discoveries of the 1960s and the growing role of relativistic astrophysics, Ludwig Biermann and his collaborators at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Munich became deeply involved in research related to such new horizons. At the end of the 1960s, Joseph Weber's announcements claiming detection of gravitational waves sparked the decisive entry of this group into the field, in parallel with the appointment of the renowned relativist Juergen Ehlers. The Munich area group of Max Planck institutes provided the fertile ground for acquiring a leading position in the 1970s, facilitating the experimental transition from resonant bars towards laser interferometry and its innovation at increasingly large scales, eventually moving to a dedicated site in Hannover in the early 1990s. The Hannover group emphasized perfecting experimental systems at pilot scales, and never developed a full-sized detector, rather joining the LIGO Scientific Collaboration at the end of the century. In parallel, the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) had been founded in Potsdam, and both sites, in Hannover and Potsdam, became a unified entity in the early 2000s and were central contributors to the first detection of gravitational waves in 2015., Comment: 94 pages. Enlarged version including new results from further archival research. A previous version appears as a chapter in the volume The Renaissance of General Relativity in Context, edited by A. Blum, R. Lalli and J. Renn (Boston: Birkhauser, 2020)

Bruno Touschek was an Austrian born theoretical physicist, who proposed and built the first electron-positron collider in 1960 in the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy. In this note we reconstruct a crucial period of Bruno Touschek's life so far scarcely explored, which runs from Summer 1945 to the end of 1946. We shall describe his university studies in G\"ottingen, placing them in the context of the reconstruction of German science after 1945. The influence of Werner Heisenberg and other prominent German physicists will be highlighted. In parallel, we shall show how the decisions of the Allied powers towards restructuring science and technology in the UK after the war effort, determined Touschek's move to the University of Glasgow in 1947., Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures (11 double figures, 1 single figure)

We describe how the first direct observation of electron-positron collisions took place in 1963-1964 at the Laboratoire de l'Acc\'el\'erateur Lin\'eaire d'Orsay, in France, with the storage ring AdA, which had been proposed and constructed in the Italian National Laboratories of Frascati in 1960, under the guidance of Bruno Touschek. The obstacles and successes of the two and a half years during which the feasibility of electron-positron colliders was proved will be illustrated using archival and forgotten documents, in addition to transcripts from interviews with Carlo Bernardini, Peppino Di Giugno, Mario Fascetti, Francois Lacoste, and Jacques Ha\"issinski., Comment: 64 pages, 37 figures, in memory of Carlo Bernardini (1930-2018) and Bruno Touschek (1921-1978)

The first electron-positron collisions in a laboratory were observed in 1963-1964 at the Laboratoire de l'Acc\'el\'erateur Lin\'eaire d'Orsay, in France, with the storage ring AdA, which had been constructed in the Italian National Laboratories of Frascati in 1960, under the guidance of Bruno Touschek. The making of the collaboration between the two laboratories included visits between Orsay and Frascati, letters between Rome and Paris, and culminated with AdA leaving Frascati on July 4th, 1962 to cross the Alps on a truck, with the doughnut degassed to $10^{-9}$mmHg through pumps powered by sets of heavy batteries. This epoch-making trip and the exchanges which preceded it are described through unpublished documents and interviews with some of its protagonists, Carlo Bernardini, Francois Lacoste, Jacques Ha\"issinski, Maurice L\'evy., Comment: 31 pages, 14 figures, version with added text and a new figure

We describe the road which led to the construction and exploitation of electron positron colliders, hightlighting how the young physics student Bruno Touschek met the Norwegian engineer Rolf Wideroe in Germany, during WWII, and collaborated in building the 15 MeV betatron, a secret project directed by Wideroe and financed by the Ministry of Aviation of the Reich. This is how Bruno Touschek learnt the science of making particle accelerators and was ready, many years later, to propose and build AdA, the first electron positron collider, in Frascati, Italy, in 1960. We shall then see how AdA was brought from Frascati to Orsay, in France. Taking advantage of the Orsay Linear Accelerator as injector, the Franco-Italian team was able to prove that collisions had taken place, opening the way to the use of particle colliders as a mean to explore high energy physics., Comment: 14 pages, 2 figures, presented at Bristol Workshop on the History of Particle Colliders, to be published in the 2017 Newsletter of IOP History of Physics group

Personal recollections on theoretical particle physics in the years when the Standard Theory was formed. In the background, the remarkable development of Italian theoretical physics in the second part of the last century, with great personalities like Bruno Touschek, Raoul Gatto, Nicola Cabibbo and their schools., Comment: 53 pages, 12 figures, to be published in The European Physical Journal H. New version with added text and figures

The object of this interview is the history of the Large Hadron Collider in the LEP tunnel at CERN, from first ideas to the discovery of the Brout-Englert-Higgs boson, seen from the point of view of a member of CERN scientific committees, of the CERN Council and a former Director General of CERN in the years of machine construction, Comment: 33 pages, 15 figures. To be published on The European Physical Journal H. New version with added text and references

Since the mid-1920s, different strands of research used stars as "physics laboratories" for investigating the nature of matter under extreme densities and pressures, impossible to realize on Earth. To trace this process this paper is following the evolution of the concept of a dense core in stars, which was important both for an understanding of stellar evolution and as a testing ground for the fast-evolving field of nuclear physics. In spite of the divide between physicists and astrophysicists, some key actors working in the cross-fertilized soil of overlapping but different scientific cultures formulated models and tentative theories that gradually evolved into more realistic and structured astrophysical objects. These investigations culminated in the first contact with general relativity in 1939, when J. Robert Oppenheimer and his students George Volkoff and Hartland Snyder systematically applied the theory to the dense core of a collapsing neutron star. This pioneering application of Einstein's theory to an astrophysical compact object can be regarded as a milestone in the path eventually leading to the emergence of relativistic astrophysics in the early 1960s., Comment: 83 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the European Physical Journal H

This is the first part of an oral history interview on the lifelong involvement of Joel Lebowitz in the development of statistical mechanics. Here the covered topics include the formative years, which overlapped the tragic period of Nazi power and World War II in Europe, the emigration to the United States in 1946 and the schooling there. It also includes the beginnings and early scientific works with Peter Bergmann, Oliver Penrose and many others. The second part will appear in a forthcoming issue of European Physical Journal H., Comment: 27 pages, 7 figures, submitted to European Physical Journal H

This article recalls the birth of the first electron-positron storage ring AdA, and the construction of the higher energy collider ADONE, where early photon-photon collisions were observed. The events which led the Austrian physicist Bruno Touschek to propose and construct AdA will be recalled, starting with early work on the Wideroe's betatron during World War II, up to the construction of ADONE, and the theoretical contribution to radiative corrections to electron-positron collisions., Comment: 11 pages, 11 figures, Contribution to Proceedings of Photon2015, June 2015, Novosibirsk, Russia

During the 1920s and 1930s, Italian physicists established strong relationships with scientists from other European countries and the United States. The career of Bruno Rossi, a leading personality in the study of cosmic rays and an Italian pioneer of this field of research, provides a prominent example of this kind of international cooperation. Physics underwent major changes during these turbulent years, and the traditional internationalism of physics assumed a more institutionalised character. Against this backdrop, Rossi's early work was crucial in transforming the study of cosmic rays into a branch of modern physics. His friendly relationships with eminent scientists -notably Enrico Fermi, Walther Bothe, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Bethe, and Homi Bhabha- were instrumental both for the exchange of knowledge about experimental practises and theoretical discussions, and for attracting the attention of physicists such as Arthur Compton, Louis Leprince-Ringuet, Pierre Auger and Patrick Blackett to the problem of cosmic rays. Relying on material from different archives in Europe and United States, this case study aims to provide a glimpse of the intersection between national and international dimensions during the 1930s, at a time when the study of cosmic rays was still very much in its infancy, strongly interlaced with nuclear physics, and full of uncertain, contradictory, and puzzling results. Nevertheless, as a source of high-energy particles it became a proving ground for testing the validity of the laws of quantum electrodynamics, and made a fundamental contribution to the origins of particle physics., Comment: 62 pages, 4 figures, revised edition, to be published on Annals of Science

Bruno Rossi is considered one of the fathers of modern physics, being also a pioneer in virtually every aspect of what is today called high-energy astrophysics. At the beginning of 1930s he was the pioneer of cosmic ray research in Italy, and, as one of the leading actors in the study of the nature and behavior of the cosmic radiation, he witnessed the birth of particle physics and was one of the main investigators in this fields for many years. While cosmic ray physics moved more and more towards astrophysics, Rossi continued to be one of the inspirers of this line of research. When outer space became a reality, he did not hesitate to leap into this new scientific dimension. Rossi's intuition on the importance of exploiting new technological windows to look at the universe with new eyes, is a fundamental key to understand the profound unity which guided his scientific research path up to its culminating moments at the beginning of 1960s, when his group at MIT performed the first in situ measurements of the density, speed and direction of the solar wind at the boundary of Earth's magnetosphere, and when he promoted the search for extra-solar sources of X rays. A visionary idea which eventually led to the breakthrough experiment which discovered Scorpius X-1 in 1962, and inaugurated X-ray astronomy., Comment: This work was presented at the conference "100 Years Cosmic Ray Physics - Anniversary of the V.F. Hess Discovery", 6-8 August, Bad Saarow/Pieskow, Germany, where Hess landed on August 7, 1912, after discovery of the "H\"ohenstrahlung". To be published in the Astroparticle Journal

Rossi's career paralleled the evolution of cosmic-ray physics. Starting from the early 1930s his pioneering work on the nature and behavior of cosmic rays led to fundamental contributions in the field of experimental cosmic-ray physics and laid the foundation for high-energy particle physics. After the war, under his leadership the Cosmic Ray group at MIT investigated the properties of the primary cosmic rays elucidating the processes involved in their propagation through the atmosphere, and measuring the unstable particles generated in the interactions with matter. When accelerators came to dominate particle physics, Rossi's attention focused on the new opportunities for exploratory investigations made possible by the availability of space vehicles. He initiated a research program which led to the first in situ measurements of the density, speed and direction of the solar wind at the boundary of Earth's magnetosphere and inspired the search for extra-solar X-ray sources resulting in the detection of what revealed to be the most powerful X-ray source in Earth's skies. The discovery of Scorpius X-1 marked the beginning of X-ray astronomy, which soon became a principal tool of astrophysics research., Comment: Upgraded English version of the article published on La Fisica nella scuola, Quaderno 22, 2011, resulting from lessons held during the last School for the history of Physics organized by the Italian Association for the Teaching of Physics (Aosta, November 29-December 4, 2010)

Theoretical and experimental developments in the 1920s that accompanied the birth of coincidence methods, as well as later crucial applications during the 1930s and 1940s are presented. In 1924 Walther Bothe and Hans Geiger applied a coincidence method to the study of Compton scattering with Geiger needle counters. Their experiment confirmed the existence of radiation quanta and established the validity of conservation principles in elementary processes. At the end of the 1920s, Bothe and Werner Kolh\"orster coupled the coincidence technique with the new Geiger-M\"uller counter to study cosmic rays, marking the start of cosmic-ray research as a branch of physics. The coincidence method was further refined by Bruno Rossi, who developed a vacuum-tube device capable of registering the simultaneous occurrence of electrical pulses from any number of counters with a tenfold improvement in time resolution. The electronic coincidence circuit bearing Rossi's name was instrumental in his research on the corpuscular nature and the properties of cosmic radiation during the early 1930s, a period characterized by a lively debate between Millikan and followers of the corpuscular interpretation. The Rossi coincidence circuit was also at the core of the counter-controlled cloud chamber developed by Patrick Blackett and Giuseppe Occhialini, and became one of the important ingredients of particle and nuclear physics. During the late 1930s and 1940s, coincidences, anti-coincidences and delayed coincidences played a crucial role in a series of experiments on the decay of the muon, which inaugurated the current era of particle physics. PACS numbers: 96.50.S-, 84.30.-r, 96.50.S-, 95.85.Ry, 29.40.-n, 13.35.Bv, 45.20.dh, 12.20.-m, 91.25.-r, 29.40.Cs, 13.20.-v, 14.60.Ef, 14.60.Cd, 78.70.Bj, 20.00.00, 95.00.00, 01.60.+q, 01.85.+f, 01.65.+g, Comment: To be published in American Journal of Physics; 50 pages, 8 figures

This article gives a brief outline of the life and works of the Austrian physicist Bruno Touschek, who conceived, proposed and, 50 years ago, brought to completion the construction of AdA, the first electron-positron storage ring. The events which led to the approval of the AdA pro ject and the Franco-Italian collaboration which con- firmed the feasibility of electron-positron storage rings will be recalled. We shall illustrate Bruno Touschek's formation both as a theoretical physicist and as an expert in particle accelerators during the period be- tween the time he had to leave the Vienna Staat Gymnasium in 1938, because of his Jewish origin from the maternal side, until he arrived in Italy in the early 1950s and, in 1960, proposed to build AdA, in Frascati. The events which led to Touschek's collaboration with Rolf Wideroe in the construction of the first European betatron will be de- scribed. The article will make use of a number of unpublished as well as previously unknown documents, which include an early correspon- dence with Arnold Sommerfeld and Bruno Touschek's letters to his family in Vienna from Italy, Germany and Great Britain. The impact of Touschek's work on students and collaborators from University of Rome will be illustrated through his work on QED infrared radiative corrections to high energy e+e- experiments and the book Meccanica Statistica., Comment: To be published in EPJH