Peter Ware Higgs, the British theoretical physicist known for his work on the Higgs boson and the Higgs mechanism, passed away on Monday 8 April at the age of 95.
In October, it will be 60 years since the publication of the paper. The paper was first rejected by a top European journal and then, after a slight modification, accepted by an American one. Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2013 for predicting the boson, which was discovered in July 2012 in experiments at the LHC accelerator at CERN. Francois Englert shared the Nobel Prize with Peter Higgs, but it was Higgs alone who developed the concepts of the Higgs boson and the Higgs mechanism, which form the basis of much of today's elementary particle theory.
Peter Higgs
In a later post, I will discuss the significance of these concepts for modern physics and how Peter Higgs came to develop them. For now, I would like to pay tribute to a man who dedicated his entire life to science, earning him the title of a true knight of the field. His humility and capacity for self-reflection serve as an example for today's generation of scientists who work in a highly competitive environment, where they must fight for citations and grants.