Are We Really Made of Quarks?

 

 

            The quark model, which embodied a radically new view of the structure of matter, was fiercely debated and rejected by most of the physics community. Its ultimate acceptance took well over a decade and occurred only after inescapable and compelling experimental evidence, but free quarks have never been observed. This talk will describe how physicists came to this seemingly strange conclusion and discuss the implications of such a picture on our concept of matter.