How Jets were Born

Amidst this interesting article in the science times yesterday on the issues faced by women in science, and physics more specifically, it was pointed out that Gail Hanson of UC Riverside discovered "quark jets". I have to admit that, even after being in my field for 15 years, I had never heard of anyone credited with the discovery of jets. Rather, I had always understood the "discovery" of jets to be the gradual acceptance of the phenomenon by high energy physicsts as the energy increased.

Of course, I was wrong. And I'm probably the last to realize this, since she's already won a Panofsky prize for this work.

Here's the link to the article on "Evidence for Jet Structure in Hadron Production by e+e- Annihilation" from Gail Hanson's website. Not only is this the first time anyone established the "jettiness" of hadrons emerging from the annihilations of electrons and positrons at "high energies" (6-7 GeV in this case), but there's actually a "first author" on this paper (Hanson herself), something which never happens anymore in high energy or nuclear physics anymore!