Precision electroweak physics at LEP

Copious event statistics, a precise understanding of the LEP energy scale, and a favorable experimental situation at the Z{sup 0} resonance have allowed the LEP experiments to provide both dramatic confirmation of the Standard Model of strong and electroweak interactions and to place substantially improved constraints on the parameters of the model. The author concentrates on those measurements relevant to the electroweak sector. It will be seen that the precision of these measurements probes sensitively the structure of the Standard Model at the one-loop level, where the calculation of the observables measured at LEP is affected by the value chosen for the top quark mass. One finds that the LEP measurements are consistent with the Standard Model, but only if the mass of the top quark is measured to be within a restricted range of about 20 GeV.