Reply #13: If you look at the time-line, it's not as clear-cut [View All]

[Squeegee]

1967: In his paper A Model of Leptons, Steven Weinberg relies on Lie group theory combined with quantum field theory to explain the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces in a single theory, using the Higgs mechanism to give mass to the weak bosons. Adbus Salam and Sheldon Glashow share the Nobel Prize with Weinberg in 1979 for Electroweak Theory.

1968: Gabriele Veneziano begins modern string theory with his paper on the dual resonance model of the strong interactions.

1970: Yoichiro Nambu, Leonard Susskind, and Holger Nielsen independently discover that the dual resonance model devised by Veneziano is based on the quantum mechanics of relativistic vibrating strings, and string theory begins.

1971: Gerard 't Hooft proved that the unified electroweak theory proposed by Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg was renormalizable, and the theory gained full respectability.