Mesons and nuclear forces

The history of the subject of mesons and nuclear forces is an example, as good as any I know in recent scientific progress, of both the wisdom and the folly of scientists. The theory of nuclear forces began in 1932 with the discovery of the neutron. This made possible a consistent picture of the structure of the nucleus, namely, to consider the nucleus as composed of neutrons and protons which are held together by very strong forces, different from and stronger than any other forces which we had known in nature before. Only three years after the discovery of the neutron and the start of nuclear theory, Yukawa suggested that the nuclear forces were transmitted between the nuclear particles, the neutron and the proton, by other particles as yet undiscovered, which have now come to be known by the name of mesons. Yukawa predicted that there should be such particles, that they should have a mass of 100 to 200 times the electron mass, that they should be charged, and that they should have integral spin, probably either zero or one.

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