Ever since the discovery of the electron more than 100 yearsago, scientists have asked the questions –“what is our universemade of?” and “why is the universe the way it is?” Notlong before, it was found that these two questions are relatedto each other. The interactions of particles in the universedetermines its evolution, its very form, and existence. In thisarticle, we will trace the discovery of some of these particles,learn about their interactions, and try to understand theirproperties such as electric charge and mass.

C SWu was a Chinese-American experimentalist, best knownfor her path-breaking experiment that showed that parity isnot conserved in beta decay. Her results gave a deeper insightinto the nature of weak interactions and enabled the correctformulation of the theory behind such interactions. She was apassionate advocate of women entering into hitherto ‘forbidden’fields of physics and mathematics and was as outspokenagainst gender discrimination as she was concerned about environmentalconservation. It was generally felt that she wasoverlooked for the Nobel Prize, perhaps because she was awoman, and a Chinese one at that.