The discovery of supergravity and its early development

TL;DR

This paper reviews the historical discovery and early development of four-dimensional supergravity with one supersymmetry, highlighting key ideas, techniques, and the progression towards general matter coupling.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive account of the initial discovery and the first six years of supergravity development, focusing on theories with a single supersymmetry in four dimensions.

Findings

First formulation of supergravity coupled to matter

Development of techniques for supersymmetry theories

Establishment of the most general matter coupling in supergravity

Abstract

I give an account of the discovery of supergravity and the first six years of its development which lead to the most general coupling of supergravity to matter. I restrict the discussion to theories with only one supersymmetry that are in four dimensions. As well as describing the contents of the papers I will also discuss the ideas and techniques they used. I begin by giving an account of the discovery of supersymmetry.