Peter Higgs, the Nobel Prize winning physicist who discovered a new particle known as the Higgs bosonhas passed away
Higgs (94), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 2013 for his work in 1964 showing how the boson helped bind the universe together by giving particles their mass, died on Monday at home in Edinburgh.
After a series of experiments that began in earnest in 2008, his theory was proven by physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Switzerland in 2012; the Nobel Prize was shared with François Englert, a Belgian theoretical physicist whose work in 1964 also directly contributed to the discovery.
A Fellow of the Royal Society and a Companion of Honour, Higgs spent most of his professional life at the University of Edinburgh, which established the Higgs Center for Theoretical Physics in his honor in 2012.
Prof Peter Mathieson, the university’s principal, said: “Peter Higgs was a remarkable individual – a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination enriched our knowledge of the world around us.
“His pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which awards the Nobel, said at the time that the standard model of physics that supports the scientific understanding of the universe “rests on the existence of a special kind of particle: the Higgs particle. This particle comes from an invisible field that fills all space.
“Even when the universe seems empty, this field is there. Without it we would not exist, because it is through contact with the field that particles gain mass. The theory proposed by Englert and Higgs describes this process.”
Higgs, an extremely shy man who disliked fuss, left home for a quiet lunch of soup and trout in Leith on the day of the announcement, only to be stopped by a former neighbor who called him the gave news on the way home.
Higgs, born in Newcastle upon Tyne, leaves behind two sons, Chris and Jonny, and two grandchildren. His wife, Jody, a linguistics lecturer from whom he was divorced, died in 2008.
