TABLE OF CONTENTS Basic physical theories and their application to other fields of science and technology always involve certain fundamental invariant quantities, called briefly fundamental constants. Well-known examples of such constants are the speed of light in vacuum, the elementary charge (electron charge), the mass of the electron, and so on. It is important to know the numerical values of the fundamental constants with the highest possible accuracy, because the attained accuracy determines the accuracy of the quantitative predictions of fundamental theories. Moreover, the accurate numerical values of the fundamental constants test the overall consistency and correctness of those theories.
The Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) was established in 1966 as an interdisciplinary committee of the International Council of Science and Technology (ICSU). The CODATA Task Group on Fundamental Constants was established in 1969, with the aim to provide internationally accepted values of the fundamental physical and chemical constants and related conversion factors. The first such CODATA set was established in 1973, while the latest one in 1998 (Mohr and Taylor 1999, 2000). The latest recommended values of the fundamental constants are also available on an Internet page (CODATA 2003), on which the following presentation is based. Those interested in all recommended values or in the earlier versions of the CODATA set are referred to that Internet page.
In this section an arbitrarily selected subset of constants is presented in tabular form. The first category is the most fundamental quantities,...
