So I liked the Higgs mechanism. But is it correct? Does it yield a healthy theory? What is and what is not allowed in describing elementary particles, and why?

Various universities in different countries organize courses at an international level, called ‘summer schools’, where in prestigious, yet quiet, recreational resorts experts and students convene to give lectures, and listen to them, and most of all to discuss their research subjects. The most prestigious summer school in my subject was in Les Houches, a winter sport resort near Chamonix, on the slopes of Mont Blanc. Presumably because I was too late in registering there, I was not admitted. But I was admitted at my second choice: Cargése. I went there in 1970.

The Institut des Sciences near Cargése on the island of Corsica was established by the French physicist Maurice Lévy. On a beautiful piece of land with a little beach, a small building had been placed where, from 1960 onwards, summer schools and conferences had been held. The 1970 summer school would be about the strong interactions. Together with Gell-Mann, Levy had constructed a model for the strong interaction. Although it was not expected to represent the complete truth, it had the nice feature that all symmetries of the strong interactions were reproduced in a very interesting way. But, because the forces are so strong, the particles will not even approximately move in straight lines, and that made the usual approximation scheme, called ‘perturbation expansion’, unreliable.