Various links between supersymmetry and the normed division algebras
R,C,H,O were found in the
1980s. This talk will focus on the link between K=R,C,H,0 and
supersymmetric field theories in a Minkowski spacetime of dimension
D=3,4,6,10. The first half will survey the history starting with a
1944/5 paper of Dirac and heading towards the links found in 1986/7
between R,C,H,O and super-Yang-Mills theories. The second half will
review a result from 1993 that connects, via a twistor-type transform,
the superfield equations of super-Maxwell theory in D=3,4,6,10 to a
K-chirality constraint on a K-valued worldline superfield of N=1,2,4,8
worldline supersymmetry. This provide an explicit connection of
octonions to the free-field D=10 super-Maxwell theory.