The Discovery of the Gluon
  Soon after the postulation of quarks, it was suggested that they interact via gluons, but direct experimental evidence was lacking for over a decade. In 1976, Mary Gaillard, Graham Ross and the author suggested searching for the gluon via 3-jet events due to gluon bremsstrahlung in $e^+ e^-$ collisions. Following our suggestion, the gluon was discovered at DESY in 1979 by TASSO and the other experiments at the PETRA collider. 
John Ellis
hep-ph hep-ex hep-th