The Discovery of the Muon and the Failed Revolution against Quantum Electrodynamics

When was the muon discovered? According to G. Bernardini, “the mu meson as a peculiar ionizing fraction of the bulk of cosmic rays was revealed by an experiment by Bothe and Kolhcrster in 1929.”’ John Wheeler, however, considered that the theoretical work of Niels Bohr and E. J. Williams, together with the experimental work of C. D. Anderson and S. Neddermeyer, “established the existence of the muon” in 1936.2 By contrast, Bruno Rossi spoke of “the discovery of thep-meson in 1937” by Anderson and Neddermeyer and J. C. Street and E. C. Steven~on.~ Street himself credited J. F. Carlson and Robert Oppenheimer in 1937 as first arguing for the necessity of the existence of a new particle of mass intermediate between that of the proton and the ele~tron.~ Finally, A. Pais began an article on the development of