Hadron
Terminology and etymology

The term "hadron" is a new Greek word introduced by L.B. Okun in a plenary talk at the 1962 International Conference on High Energy Physics at CERN. He opened his talk with the definition of a new category term:

Notwithstanding the fact that this report deals with weak interactions, we shall frequently have to speak of strongly interacting particles. These particles pose not only numerous scientific problems, but also a terminological problem. The point is that " strongly interacting particles " is a very clumsy term which does not yield itself to the formation of an adjective. For this reason, to take but one instance, decays into strongly interacting particles are called "non- leptonic ". This definition is not exact because "non-leptonic" may also signify photonic. In this report I shall call strongly interacting particles "hadrons", and the corresponding decays "hadronic" (the Greek ἁδρός signifies "large", "massive", in contrast to λεπτός which means "small", "light"). I hope that this terminology will prove to be convenient. — L.B. Okun (1962)
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