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Bruno Touschek, from Betatrons to Electron-positron Colliders

Bruno Touschek's life as a physicist spanned the period from World War II to the 1970s. He was a key figure in the developments of electron-positron colliders, storage rings, and gave important contributions to theoretical high energy physics. Storage rings, initially developed for high energy physics, are being widely used in many countries as synchrotron radiation sources and are a tool for research in physics, chemistry, biology environmental sciences and cultural heritage studies. We describe Touschek's life in Austria, where he was born, Germany, where he participated to the construction of a betatron during WWII, and Italy, where he proposed and led to completion the first electron-positron storage ring in 1960, in Frascati. We highlight how his central European culture influenced his life style and work, and his main contributions to physics, such as the discovery of the Touschek effect and beam instabilities in the larger storage ring ADONE.