Half a Century of Supergravity : Bridging between Einstein and the Quantum

This volume gathers the contributions of founders, experts, and practitioners of supergravity celebrating the 50th anniversary of its birth, discussing the history of the field and its modern applications to high-energy physics, mathematics, particle physics, and cosmology. Since its discovery in the mid-1970s, fully understanding its symmetries and structures, the physical implications, permitted generalizations, and the connections with other theories have been highly nontrivial challenges. Whether supergravity will be proven true by experiments or will remain a mathematical framework, the theory is elegant, intriguing, rich, and entertaining. Many agree that it will continue to be an inspiration and theoretical laboratory for quantum gravity, as well as an intellectual achievement that expresses the highest levels of human creativity in our effort to understand the cosmos and its rules. Current and future practitioners, and historians of science, will value both the comprehensive history and future perspectives of the field within.