The International Conference on the History of Original Ideas and Basic Discoveries, held at the "Ettore Majorana" Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Sicily, July 27-August 4, 1994, brought together sixty of the leading scientists including many Nobel Laureates in high energy physics, principal contributors in other fields of physics such as high Tc superconductivity, particle accelerators and detector instrumentation, and thirty-six talented younger physicists selected from candidates throughout the world. The scientific program, including 49 lectures and a discussion session on the "Status and Future Directions in High Energy Physics" was inspired by the conference theme: The key experimental discoveries and theoretical breakthroughs of the last 50 years, in particle physics and related fields, have led us to a powerful description of matter in terms of three quark and three lepton families and four fundamental interactions. The most recent generation of experiments at e+e- and proton-proton colliders, and corresponding advances in theoretical calculations, have given us remarkably precise determinations of the basic parameters of the electroweak and strong interactions. These developments, while showing the striking internal consistency of the Standard Model, have also sharpened our view of the many unanswered questions which remain for the next generation: the origin and pattern of particle masses and families, the unification of the interactions including gravity, and the relation between the laws of physics and the initial conditions of the universe.

Session I.- 1. Indirect Approaches to Fundamental Theory.- 2. Quantum Electrodynamics - From a Personal Perspective.- 3. Electroweak Reminiscences.- 4. Gauge Theory and Renormalization.- 5. Magnetic Monopoles, Fiber Bundles, and Gauge Fields.- 6. Vacua, Vacuum: The Physics of Nothing.- Session II.- 7. Asymptotic Freedom, Confinement and QCD.- 8. Gluon Jets.- 9. QCD in "Her" Maiden Years.- 10. The Discovery of the Muon.- 11. Kaon Decays to Pions: The ?-? Problem.- 12. Symmetries and Meson Decays.- Session III.- 13. Test of QED and Photoproduction of Vector Mesons.- 14. Foundations of Sequential Heavy Lepton Searches.- 15. The Discovery of the Tau Lepton: Part I: The Early History through 1975; Part II: Confirmation of the Discovery and Measurement of Major Properties, 1976-1982.- 16. The Discovery of the J Particle: A Personal Recollection.- 17. From the ? Charmed Mesons.- 18. The Discovery of the Upsilon Family.- Session IV.- 19. Parity Violation.- 20. The Detection of Pauli's Neutrino.- 21. The Helicities of the Three Neutrinos.- 22. CP Violation.- 23. Quark Families and Flavor - Changing Neutral Currents.- 24. Flavor Mixing and CP Violation.- Session V.- 25. Electron-Positron and Electron-Proton Storage Ring Colliders.- 26. Linear Colliders.- 27. The Tevatron Hadron Collider: A Short History.- 28. Hadron Sampling Total Absorption (STAC) Calorimeters.- 29. Development of Ring Imaging Cherenkov Counters for Particle Identification.- Session VI.- 30. Grand Unified Theories.- 31. Technicolor.- 32. Supersymmetric Unification.- 33. R-Parity, the Supersymmetric Standard Model and the Phenomenology of Supersymmetry.- 34. Supergravity before 1976.- 35. The March Towards No-Scale Supergravity.- 36. Superstring - A Brief History.- Session VII.- 37. BaryonSpectroscopy and the Omega Minus.- 38. Deep Inelastic Scattering Evidence for the Reality of Quarks.- 39. Neutral Currents.- 40. The W and Z Bosons: Chronicle of an Announced Discovery.- Session VIII.- 41. Richard Feynman and the History of Superconductivity.- 42. High Temperature Superconductivity.- Session IX.- 43. Discussion Session: Status and Future Directions in High Energy Physics.- Session X.- 44. Neutrino Oscillations - History, Status and Challenge.- 45. Dark Matter.- 46. Dark Matter Searches for Monopoles and WIMPs.- 47. Historical Remarks on "Gamma Resonance Spectroscopy" (Mössbauer-Effect).- 48. The Life and Times of Emmy Noether: Contributions of Emmy Noether to Particle Physics.- 49. Closing Speech: Physics from Past to Future.