Latest Results from HERA

Deep inelastic scattering of leptons off nucleons has played a fundamental role in the understanding of the structure of the nucleon. At the HERA electron proton collider it is possible to study the proton in new kinematic regimes, in particular at low Bjorken-x and at large virtualityQ2. Due to the large centre of mass energy of 300 GeV HERA is also an important facility to search for new phenomena. The HERMES experiment also allows the spin structure of the nucleon to be studied. In this paper only a few of the many results from the HERA experiments are discussed. They have been chosen to give a flavour of the full scope of physics topics that are explored in high energy electron proton scattering. In the first section the measurements on the proton structure function F2 are presented and interpreted in the context of perturbative QCD. Next the measurements of the DIS cross sections at high Q2 in both neutral and charged current scattering are presented and the effects of the exchange of weak gauge bosons are discussed. The DIS data are then used to put constraints on extensions to the Standard Model where particles that have quantum numbers of both leptons and quarks are produced. Then a search for direct production of W bosons is presented. Finally a first result on the spin of the gluon is presented.