Supersymmetry: Early Roots That Did Not Grow

Abstract

This article is about early roots of supersymmetry, as found in the literature from 1940s and early 1950s. There were models where the power of "partners" in alleviating divergences in quantum field theory was recognized. However, other currently known remarkable features of supersymmetry, such as its role in the extension of the Poincaré group, were not known. There were, of course, no supersymmetric non-abelian quantum field theories in those days. This article is organized as follows: