Professor Peter Higgs has died aged 94. The theoretical physicist was best known for his prediction of a key elementary particle, the Higgs boson, which earned him the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics soon after its discovery.
Whether you were following science news or not, in the early 2010s the term “Higgs boson” broke out of the depths of physics circles and into mainstream awareness. That’s because scientists at CERN were edging tantalizingly close to finding this Holy Grail – the final missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics, which had eluded detection for decades. And in 2012, CERN announced that the Higgs boson had finally been discovered in the Large Hadron Collider, marking one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs of this century.
As such, the following year the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to the boson’s namesake Peter Higgs, as well as Belgian theoretical physicist François Englert, whose team independently predicted the particle in the 1960s.
Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1929, Higgs studied at King’s College London and later became a professor at the University of Edinburgh. There, he became interested in the mass of subatomic particles, and in particular, a major problem with the Standard Model that predicted fundamental particles should have no mass, despite observations to the contrary.
Over time, the physicists developed a theoretical model that explained how fundamental particles gained mass through interactions with a quantum field that pervades the universe. This field would give rise to its own particle, which later came to be named after Higgs himself – as did the field and mechanism.
Although Higgs wasn’t directly involved in the eventual detection, he presented during the CERN announcement. Along with his Nobel Prize, he was honored 10 other prestigious scientific awards during his career.
"Higgs, the human being, was famously modest," said Professor Raymond Volkas, from the School of Physics at The University of Melbourne, Australia. "He gave due credit to other physicists who also discovered the gist of what we call the Higgs mechanism. He explained sometimes abstruse physics with admirable lucidity, overcoming his natural shyness when being interviewed."
According to a statement from the University of Edinburgh, Higgs died peacefully at home on Monday, April 8, 2024, after a short illness.
“Peter Higgs was a remarkable individual – a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us,” said Professor Sir Peter Mathieson, Principal and Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. “His pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”
Source: University of Edinburgh
