Peter Higgs, who predicted the existence of a new particle that came to be named after him (as well as God) and sparked a half-century, worldwide, billion-dollar search for it culminating in champagne in 2012 and a Nobel Prize a year later, died on Monday. He was 94. His death was announced by the University of Edinburgh, where he was an emeritus professor.No further details were provided. Dr Higgs lived in Edinburgh.
Higgs was a 35-year-old assistant professor at the university in 1964 when he suggested the existence of a new particle that would explain how other particles acquire mass. The Higgs boson, also known as “the God particle“, would become the keystone of a suite of theories known as the Standard Model, which encapsulated all human knowledge so far about elementary particles and the forces by which they shaped nature and the universe.
A half-century later, on July 4, 2012, he received a standing ovation as he walked into a lecture hall at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva and heard that his particle had finally been found. On a webcast from the laboratory, the whole world watched him pull out a handkerchief and wipe away a tear. “It’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime,” he said.
Declining to stick around for the after-parties, Higgs flew right back home, celebrating on the plane with a can of London Pride beer. CERN, which has shelves of empty Champagne bottles commemorating great moments lining its control room, asked if it could have the can, but Higgs had already thrown it away.
Higgs was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, in May 29, 1929. His interest in physics was tweaked when he was attending the same school, Cotham Grammar School, as had Paul Dirac, the great British theorist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics. That theory, which describes the forces of nature as a game of catch between force-carrying bits of energy called bosons, would be the same field in which Higgs would rise to fame.
After temporary research posts at the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London and University College London, he took a permanent job as a lecturer at Edinburgh in 1960. At Edinburgh, he redirected his research from chemistry and molecules to his first love, elementary particles.
The boson became a big deal in 1967 when Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas in Austin, made it the linchpin in unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces. It became an even bigger deal in 1971, when the Belgian theorist Gerardus’t Hooft proved that the whole scheme made mathematical sense. Higgs said Benjamin Lee, a physicist who later died in a car crash, christened it the Higgs boson during a conference in about 1972, perhaps because Higgs’s paper was cited first in Weinberg’s paper.
The name stuck, not just to the particle, but to the molasses field that produced it and the mechanism by which that field gave mass to other particles – somewhat to the embarrassment of Higgs and the annoyance of the other theorists. He cringed every time the term “Higgs boson” was used in his presence. But as a life-long atheist, he disliked the “God particle” even more.
Higgs was a 35-year-old assistant professor at the university in 1964 when he suggested the existence of a new particle that would explain how other particles acquire mass. The Higgs boson, also known as “the God particle“, would become the keystone of a suite of theories known as the Standard Model, which encapsulated all human knowledge so far about elementary particles and the forces by which they shaped nature and the universe.
A half-century later, on July 4, 2012, he received a standing ovation as he walked into a lecture hall at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Geneva and heard that his particle had finally been found. On a webcast from the laboratory, the whole world watched him pull out a handkerchief and wipe away a tear. “It’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime,” he said.
Declining to stick around for the after-parties, Higgs flew right back home, celebrating on the plane with a can of London Pride beer. CERN, which has shelves of empty Champagne bottles commemorating great moments lining its control room, asked if it could have the can, but Higgs had already thrown it away.
Higgs was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, in May 29, 1929. His interest in physics was tweaked when he was attending the same school, Cotham Grammar School, as had Paul Dirac, the great British theorist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics. That theory, which describes the forces of nature as a game of catch between force-carrying bits of energy called bosons, would be the same field in which Higgs would rise to fame.
After temporary research posts at the University of Edinburgh, Imperial College London and University College London, he took a permanent job as a lecturer at Edinburgh in 1960. At Edinburgh, he redirected his research from chemistry and molecules to his first love, elementary particles.
The boson became a big deal in 1967 when Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas in Austin, made it the linchpin in unifying the weak and electromagnetic forces. It became an even bigger deal in 1971, when the Belgian theorist Gerardus’t Hooft proved that the whole scheme made mathematical sense. Higgs said Benjamin Lee, a physicist who later died in a car crash, christened it the Higgs boson during a conference in about 1972, perhaps because Higgs’s paper was cited first in Weinberg’s paper.
The name stuck, not just to the particle, but to the molasses field that produced it and the mechanism by which that field gave mass to other particles – somewhat to the embarrassment of Higgs and the annoyance of the other theorists. He cringed every time the term “Higgs boson” was used in his presence. But as a life-long atheist, he disliked the “God particle” even more.