Revealing Partons in Hadrons: From the ISR to the SPS Collider

Our understanding of the structure of hadrons has developed during the seventies and early eighties from a few vague ideas to a precise theory, Quantum Chromodynamics, that describes hadrons as made of elementary partons (quarks and gluons). Deep inelastic scattering of electrons and neutrinos on nucleons and electron–positron collisions have played a major role in this development. Less well known is the role played by hadron collisions in revealing the parton structure, studying the dynamic of interactions between partons and offering an exclusive laboratory for the direct study of gluon interactions. The present article recalls the decisive contributions made by the CERN Intersecting Storage Rings and, later, the proton–antiproton SPS Collider to this chapter of physics.