Peter Higgs was a British theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics for proposing the existence of the subatomic particle that bears his name, the Higgs boson.
- Died: April 8, 2024 (Who else died on April 8?)
- Details of death: Died at his home in Edinburgh, Scotland of a blood disorder at the age of 94.
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Peter Higgs’ legacy
Higgs was a young professor when, in 1964, he penned a paper proposing the existence of a new particle that gave mass to all other particles. In fact, the proposal of the particle wasn’t the initial goal of his paper; he was first trying to propose an invisible energy field. But when his paper was rejected, he rewrote it, emphasizing the possibility of a new subatomic particle — and with it, an explanation of how the universe works at a fundamental level.
This paper was published, and the scientific community began discussing this potentially powerful particle, referring to it both as the “God particle” for its suspected influence on all other objects and the Higgs boson in honor of the first person to suggest its existence (though other scientists proposed the existence of the particle in the mid-1960s, independent of Higgs’ work). In addition to the particle, the Higgs field, also discussed in his 1964 paper, was named in his honor.
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN began searching for the Higgs boson in the 1980s, and in 2012, the particle was finally identified. Amidst great celebration in the scientific community, Higgs himself was both thrilled with the scientific work and a bit bemused by the attention he received. In fact, when the news came that he would receive the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics, he tried to drive out to the country to avoid the fracas. But when his car didn’t work, he stayed home, where, when congratulated by a neighbor on winning the prize, he joked, “What prize?”
The same year the Higgs boson was discovered, Higgs was named a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. He was given many honorary degrees, including from the University of Cambridge and Queen’s University Belfast. His portrait hangs in the University of Edinburgh’s James Clerk Maxwell Building, which houses its School of Physics and Astronomy and School of Mathematics. The university also named its Higgs Center for Theoretical Physics in his honor.
Higgs on the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson
“During the talks, I was still distancing myself from it all, but when the seminar ended, it was like being at a football match when the home team had won. There was a standing ovation for the people who gave the presentation, cheers and stamping. It was like being knocked over by a wave.” — from a 2012 interview for New Scientist
Tributes to Peter Higgs
Full obituary: The New York Times
