Mass of the fundamental fermion and degeneracy of the vacuum

Within the framework of the Heisenberg variant of the unified nonlinear spinor theory of elementary particles an attempt is made to calculate the mass of the fundamental fermion (nucleon). The guiding principle is the notion of the existence of a relation between the helicity properties of particles and their masses. In this case it proves necessary to take into account the possibility of degeneracy of the vacuum of the system of interacting fields in certain quantum numbers, A program is outlined for constructing a realistic scheme of elementary particles to include their Isotropic and strange properties. The possibility of eliminating divergences from the nonlinear theory, while preserving its applicability, by means of a somewhat modified perturbation theory is briefly discussed.The author is grateful to Professor D. Ivanenko for his constant interest and helpful advice.