Spontaneous ionization to subatomic physics: Victor Hess to Peter Higgs

The discovery of cosmic rays, a milestone in science, was based on the work by scientists in Europe and the New World. Many scientists that took part in this research a century ago were intrigued by the penetrating radiation and tried to understand the origin of it. Cosmic ray physics is at the foundations of modern particle physics, and some of the recent discoveries in particle physics find their roots in cosmic-ray physics.