  This is the foreword to the book we edited on the origins and early
development of supersymmetry, which has been just issued by World Scientific.
This book presents a view on the discovery of supersymmetry and pioneering
investigations before summer 1976, mainly in the words of people who
participated. It combines anecdotal descriptions and personal reminiscences
with more technical summaries of the trailblazers, covering the birth of the
theory and its first years -- origin of the idea, four-dimensional field theory
realization, and supergravity. The eyewitnesses convey to us the drama of one
of the deepest discoveries in theoretical physics in the 20-th century.
Contributors: V. Akulov, R. Di Stefano, P. Fayet, S. Ferrara, G.-L. Gervais, N.
Koretz-Golfand, E. Likhtman, M. Marinov, A. Neveu, L. O'Raifeartaigh, P.
Ramond, B. Sakita, J. Schwarz, M. Sohnius, V. Soroka, J. Strathdee, D. Volkov,
J. Wess, P. West.
