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Discovery of mesons: César Lattes was a Brazilian physicist who, along with Cecil Powell and Giuseppe Occhialini, discovered the pion, the first meson, in 1947. Mesons are subatomic particles that mediate the strong nuclear force between protons and neutrons. Lattes' discovery was a major breakthrough in particle physics, as it provided the first evidence for the existence of particles other than protons, neutrons, and electrons.