The path to high-energy electron-positron colliders: from Wideroe's betatron to Touschek's AdA and to LEP

Abstract: 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.