The lambda baryon Λ0 was first discovered in October 1950, by V. D. Hopper and S. Biswas of the University of Melbourne, as a neutral V particle with a proton as a decay product, thus correctly distinguishing it as a baryon, rather than a meson,[2] i.e. different in kind from the K meson discovered in 1947 by Rochester and Butler;[3] they were produced by cosmic rays and detected in photographic emulsions flown in a balloon at 70,000 feet (21,000 m).

He had suggested that neutrino interactions could create short-lived (perhaps as low as 10−14 s) particles that could be detected with the use of nuclear emulsion.

Experiment E247 at Fermilab successfully detected particles with a lifetime of the order of 10−13 s. A follow-up experiment WA17 with the SPS confirmed the existence of the Λ+c (charmed lambda baryon), with a lifetime of (7.3±0.1)×10−13 s.[7][8] In 2011, the international team at JLab used high-resolution spectrometer measurements of the reaction H(e, e′K+)X at small Q2 (E-05-009) to extract the pole position in the complex-energy plane (primary signature of a resonance) for the Λ(1520) with mass = 1518.8 MeV and width = 17.2 MeV which seem to be smaller than their Breit–Wigner values.

Antiparticles are not listed in the table; however, they simply would have all quarks changed to antiquarks, and Q, B, S, C, B′, T, would be of opposite signs.

I, J, and P values in red have not been firmly established by experiments, but are predicted by the quark model and are consistent with the measurements.