This letter originally appeared in the CERN Courier.

The official story (CERN Courier March 2014 p37) is that they were invented by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, in that chronological order: Gell-Mann’s published paper was received by Physics Letters on 4 January 1964, while Zweig’s unpublished work is a CERN Yellow Report dated 17 January of the same year. But, as Napoleon is said to have said: "History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

This official story might be wrong in its dates, since Gell-Mann’s paper, at least according to the same hardly trustable source of the previous quote (i.e. the internet) was, shamefully, rejected by Physical Review Letters. That would not change the chronological order, which is irrelevant anyway, because the dates were so close. Concerning dates, it must also be recalled that Gell-Mann wrote: "These ideas were developed…in March 1963; the author would like to thank Professor Robert Serber for stimulating them."

The official story is demonstrably wrong on one point: André Petermann published a paper (in French!) in Nuclear Physics that was received on 30 December 1963, shortly before the dates quoted in the first lines of this letter, although not published for some time (A Petermann 1965 Nuclear Physics 63 349). In that paper, perhaps delayed by yet another sceptical referee, Petermann discussed mesons as made of a "spinor/anti-spinor pair" and baryons as "composed of at least three spinors". Concerning the delicate issue of their charges, Petermann delightfully writes: "If one wants to preserve charge conservation, which is highly desirable, the spinors must have fractional charges. This fact is unpleasant, but cannot, after all, be excluded on physical grounds."

There are other unofficial issues concerning this gorgeous chapter in the history of science. Who rejected Gell-Mann’s paper? Was Zweig forbidden to give a talk at CERN at the time? If so, by whom? I am only allowed to write up to 300 words, that’s it. Thou shalt not know the answers.

Don't miss: "The dawn of the Standard Model's revolution", a lecture by Luigi di Lella and Alvaro de Rujula. Main Auditorium, CERN, 6 June at 3.30pm and webcast.