Peter Higgs

Template:Short description Template:EngvarB Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist

Peter Ware Higgs (29 May 1929 – 8 April 2024) was a British theoretical physicist, professor at the University of Edinburgh,<ref name="Edit">Griggs, Jessica (Summer 2008) The Missing Piece Template:Webarchive Edit the University of Edinburgh Alumni Magazine, p. 17</ref><ref name="NYT-20140915">Template:Cite news</ref> and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.<ref>Overbye, Dennis. A Pioneer as Elusive as His Particle Template:Webarchive, The New York Times website, 15 September 2014. Also published in print on 16 September 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition.</ref><ref name="NYT-20220715">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1964, Higgs was the single author of one of the three milestone papers published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) that proposed that spontaneous symmetry breaking in electroweak theory could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This Higgs mechanism predicted the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson, the detection of which became one of the great goals of physics.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Fermilab Today (16 June 2005) Fermilab Results of the Week. Top Quarks are Higgs' best Friend Template:Webarchive Retrieved on 27 May 2008</ref> In 2012, CERN announced the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider.<ref name=BBC-04Jul12/> The Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which certain particles would have no mass.<ref>Rincon, Paul (10 March 2004) Fermilab 'God Particle' may have been seen Template:Webarchive Retrieved on 27 May 2008</ref>

For this work, Higgs received the Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared with François Englert in 2013.<ref>Amos, Jonathan (8 October 2013) Higgs: Five decades of noble endeavour Template:Webarchive BBC News Science and Environment; retrieved 8 October 2013</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

Higgs was born<ref>GRO Register of Births: Peter W Higgs, Jun 1929 10b 72 Newcastle T., mmn = Coghill</ref> in the Elswick district of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, to Thomas Ware Higgs (1898–1962) and his wife<ref>GRO Register of Marriages: Thomas W Higgs = Gertrude M Coghill, Sep 1924 6a 197 Bristol</ref> Gertrude Maude née Coghill (1895–1969).<ref name="CV">Staff (29 November 2012) Peter Higgs: Curriculum Vitae Template:Webarchive The University of Edinburgh, School of Physics and Astronomy. Retrieved 9 January 2012</ref><ref name="Guardian">Sample, Ian. "The god of small things" Template:Webarchive, The Guardian, 17 November 2007, weekend section.</ref><ref>Macdonald, Kenneth (10 April 2013) Peter Higgs: Behind the scenes at the Universe Template:Webarchive. BBC.</ref> His father worked as a sound engineer for the BBC, and as a result of childhood asthma, together with the family moving around because of his father's job and later World War II, Higgs missed some early schooling and was taught at home.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> When his father relocated to Bedford, Higgs stayed behind in Bristol with his mother, and was largely raised there. He attended Cotham Grammar School in Bristol from 1941 to 1946,<ref name =CV/><ref>The Cotham Grammar School, a High-Performing Specialist Co-operative Academy The Dirac-Higgs Science Centre Template:Webarchive Retrieved 10 January 2013</ref> where he was inspired by the work of one of the school's alumni, Paul Dirac, a founder of the field of quantum mechanics.<ref name=Guardian/>

In 1946, at the age of 17, Higgs moved to City of London School, where he specialised in mathematics, then in 1947 to King's College London, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in physics in 1950 and achieved a master's degree in 1952.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851,<ref>1851 Royal Commission Archives</ref> and performed his doctoral research in molecular physics under the supervision of Charles Coulson and Christopher Longuet-Higgins.<ref name=higgsphd/> He was awarded a PhD degree in 1954 with a thesis entitled Some problems in the theory of molecular vibrations from the university.<ref name="higgsphd">Template:Cite thesis</ref><ref name = CV/><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Career and researchEdit

After finishing his doctorate, Higgs was appointed a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh (1954–56). He then held various posts at Imperial College London, and University College London (where he also became a temporary lecturer in mathematics). He returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1960 to take up the post of Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics, allowing him to settle in the city he had enjoyed while hitchhiking to the Western Highlands as a student in 1949.<ref name="TheInterview">Mackenzie, Kate (2012) "It Was Worth The Wait" The Interview, The University of Edinburgh Alumni Magazine, Winter 2012/13</ref><ref>Template:Cite AV media</ref> He was promoted to Reader, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 1974 and was promoted to a personal chair of Theoretical Physics in 1980. On his retirement in 1996, he became an emeritus professor.<ref Name = Edit/>

Higgs was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1983 and Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) in 1991. He was awarded the Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1984. He received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol in 1997. In 2008, he received an Honorary Fellowship from Swansea University for his work in particle physics.<ref name="SUHF">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> At Edinburgh, Higgs first became interested in mass, developing the idea that particles – massless when the universe began – acquired mass a fraction of a second later as a result of interacting with a theoretical field (which became known as the Higgs field). Higgs postulated that this field permeates space, giving mass to all elementary subatomic particles interacting with it.<ref name="Guardian" /><ref name="EB">"Higgs particle" Template:Webarchive, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2007.</ref>

The Higgs mechanism postulates the existence of the Higgs field, which confers mass on quarks and leptons;<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> this causes only a tiny portion of the masses of other subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In these, gluons that bind quarks together confer most of the particle mass. The original basis of Higgs's work came from the Japanese-born theorist and Nobel Prize laureate Yoichiro Nambu from the University of Chicago. Nambu had proposed a theory known as spontaneous symmetry breaking based on what was known to happen in superconductivity in condensed matter, which incorrectly predicted massless particles (the Goldstone's theorem).<ref name="Edit" />

Higgs reportedly developed the fundamentals of his theory after returning to his Edinburgh New Town apartment from a failed weekend camping trip to the Highlands.<ref>Martin, Victoria (14 December 2011) Soon we'll be able to pinpoint that particle Template:Webarchive The Scotsman. Retrieved 10 January 2013</ref><ref>Collins, Nick (4 July 2012) Higgs boson: Prof Stephen Hawking loses $100 bet Template:Webarchive The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 10 January 2013</ref><ref>Staff (4 July 2012) Scientists discover 'God' particle Template:Webarchive The Herald. Glasgow. Retrieved 10 January 2013</ref> He stated that there was no "eureka moment" in the development of the theory.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He wrote a short paper exploiting a loophole in Goldstone's theorem (massless Goldstone particles need not occur when local symmetry is spontaneously broken in a relativistic theory<ref name = HiggsMechanism/>) and published it in Physics Letters, a European physics journal edited at CERN, in Switzerland, in 1964.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Higgs wrote a second paper describing a theoretical model (the Higgs mechanism), but the paper was rejected (the editors of Physics Letters judged it "of no obvious relevance to physics").<ref name=Guardian/> Higgs wrote an extra paragraph and sent his paper to Physical Review Letters, another leading physics journal, which published it later in 1964. This paper predicted a new massive spin-zero boson (later named the Higgs boson).<ref name="HiggsMechanism">Staff (5 January 2012) Brief History of the Higgs Mechanism Template:Webarchive The Edinburgh University School of Physics and Astronomy. Retrieved 10 January 2013</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Other physicists, Robert Brout and François Englert<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> and Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen and Tom Kibble<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> had reached similar conclusions at about the same time. In the published version, Higgs quotes Brout and Englert, and the third paper quotes the previous ones. The three papers written on this boson discovery by Higgs, Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Brout, and Englert were each recognised as milestone papers by Physical Review Letters 50th-anniversary celebration.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> While each of these famous papers took similar approaches, the contributions and differences between the 1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers are noteworthy. The mechanism had been proposed in 1962 by Philip Anderson although he did not include a crucial relativistic model.<ref name = HiggsMechanism/><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

On 4 July 2012, CERN announced the ATLAS and Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments had seen strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Speaking at the seminar in Geneva, Higgs commented "It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime."<ref name="BBC-04Jul12">Template:Cite news</ref> Ironically, this probable confirmation of the Higgs boson was made at the same place where the editor of Physics Letters rejected Higgs's paper.<ref name = Edit/>

Awards and honoursEdit

Higgs was honoured with several awards in recognition of his work, including the 1981 Hughes Medal from the Royal Society; the 1984 Rutherford Medal from the Institute of Physics; the 1997 Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics from the Institute of Physics; the 1997 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society; the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics; the 2009 Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture medal from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the 2010 American Physical Society J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics; a unique Higgs Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012;<ref name =CV/> and the Royal Society awarded him the 2015 Copley Medal, the world's oldest scientific prize.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Civic awardsEdit

File:The Edinburgh Award (14598791818).jpg

Edinburgh Award handprints

Higgs was the recipient of the Edinburgh Award for 2011. He was the fifth person to receive the Award, which was established in 2007 by the City of Edinburgh Council to honour an outstanding individual who has made a positive impact on the city and gained national and international recognition for Edinburgh.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Higgs was presented with an engraved loving cup by the Rt Hon George Grubb, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in a ceremony held at the City Chambers on Friday, 24 February 2012. The event also marked the unveiling of his handprints in the City Chambers quadrangle, where they had been engraved in Caithness stone alongside those of previous Edinburgh Award recipients.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Scotsman-25Feb12">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Higgs was awarded the Freedom of the City of Bristol in July 2013.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Dirac-Higgs Science Centre in Bristol is also named in his honour.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In April 2014, he was also awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was also honoured with a brass plaque installed on the Newcastle Quayside as part of the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative Local Heroes Walk of Fame.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Higgs Centre for Theoretical PhysicsEdit

On 6 July 2012, Edinburgh University announced a new centre named after Professor Higgs to support future research in theoretical physics. The Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics brings together scientists from around the world to seek "a deeper understanding of how the universe works".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The centre is currently based within the James Clerk Maxwell Building, home of the university's School of Physics and Astronomy and the iGEM 2015 team (ClassAfiED). The university has also established a chair of theoretical physics in the name of Peter Higgs.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Nobel Prize in PhysicsEdit

On 8 October 2013, it was announced that Higgs and François Englert would share the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Higgs admitted he had gone out to avoid the media attention<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> so he was informed he had been awarded the prize by an ex-neighbour on his way home, since he did not have a mobile phone.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Member of the Order of the Companions of HonourEdit

Higgs turned down a knighthood in 1999, but in 2012, he accepted membership of the Order of the Companions of Honour.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He later said that he only accepted the order because he was wrongly assured that the award was in the gift of the Queen alone. He also expressed cynicism towards the honours system, and the way the system "is used for political purposes by the government in power". The order confers no title or precedence, but recipients of the order are entitled to use the post-nominal letters Template:Small. In the same interview he also stated that when people ask what the Template:Small after his name stands for, he replies "it means I'm an honorary Swiss."<ref name="Aitkenhead-2013">Template:Cite news</ref> He received the order from the Queen at an investiture at Holyrood House on 1 July 2014.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Honorary degreesEdit

Higgs was awarded honorary degrees from the following institutions: Template:Div col

DSc University of Bristol 1997<ref name="cv">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

DSc University of Edinburgh 1998<ref name="cv" />
DSc University of Glasgow 2002<ref name="cv" />
DSc Swansea University 2008<ref name="cv" />
DSc King's College London 2009<ref name="cv" />
DSc University College London 2010<ref name="cv" />
ScD University of Cambridge 2012<ref name="cv" />
DSc Heriot-Watt University 2012<ref name="cv" />
PhD SISSA, Trieste 2013<ref name="cv" />
DSc University of Durham 2013<ref name="cv" />
DSc University of Manchester 2013<ref name="cv" />
DSc University of St Andrews 2014<ref name="cv" />
DSc Free University of Brussels (ULB) 2014<ref name="cv" />
DSc University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2015<ref name="cv" />
DSc Queen's University Belfast 2015<ref name="cv" />
ScD Trinity College Dublin 2016<ref name="cv" />

Template:Div col end

A portrait of Higgs was painted by Ken Currie in 2008.<ref name="tait-portrait">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Commissioned by the University of Edinburgh,<ref>Template:Cite news Template:Subscription required</ref> it was unveiled on 3 April 2009<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and hangs in the entrance of the James Clerk Maxwell Building of the School of Physics and Astronomy and the School of Mathematics.<ref name=tait-portrait/> A large portrait by Lucinda Mackay is in the collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. Another portrait of Higgs by the same artist hangs in the birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell in Edinburgh; Higgs was the Honorary Patron of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation. A portrait by Victoria Crowe was commissioned by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and unveiled in 2013.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Personal life and political viewsEdit

Higgs married Jody Williamson, an American lecturer in linguistics at Edinburgh and a fellow activist with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND),<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> in 1963. Their first son was born in August 1965.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Higgs had two sons: Christopher and Jonny, a jazz musician.<ref name=NS/> He also had two grandchildren: Jo, a writer, and Bonnie (Kemplay), a musician.<ref name=Scotsman-25Feb12/> Higgs and Williamson separated in 1972 but remained friends until she died in 2008.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Higgs was an activist in the CND while in London and later in Edinburgh but resigned his membership when the group extended its remit from campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power, too.<ref name=Guardian/><ref name="Telegraph">Template:Cite news</ref> He was a Greenpeace member until the group opposed genetically modified organisms.<ref name=Telegraph/> Higgs was awarded the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics (sharing it with Robert Brout and François Englert) but declined to attend the awards ceremony in Jerusalem in protest of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.<ref name="Indie-heart">Template:Cite news</ref> Higgs was actively involved in the Edinburgh University branch of the Association of University Teachers, through which he agitated for greater staff involvement in the management of the physics department.<ref name="Aitkenhead-2013" />

Higgs was an atheist.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He described Richard Dawkins as having adopted a "fundamentalist" view of non-atheists.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Higgs expressed displeasure with the nickname the "God particle".<ref>Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon Template:Webarchive Reuters news story. 7 April 2008.</ref> Although it has been reported that he believed the term "might offend people who are religious",<ref name="NS">"Interview: the man behind the 'God particle'", New Scientist 13 September 2008, pp. 44–45 Template:Subscription required Template:Webarchive</ref> Higgs stated that this is not the case, lamenting the letters he has received which claim the God particle was predicted in the Torah, the Qur'an and Buddhist scriptures. In a 2013 interview with Decca Aitkenhead, Higgs was quoted as saying:<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

I'm not a believer. Some people get confused between the science and the theology. They claim that what happened at CERN proves the existence of God. The church in Spain has also been guilty of using that name as evidence for what they want to prove. [It] reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?{{#if:6 December 2013The Guardian|{{#if:|}}
— {{#if:|, in }}Template:Comma separated entries
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The nickname for the Higgs boson is usually attributed to Leon M. Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question? but the name is the result of the suggestion of Lederman's publisher; Lederman had initially intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

DeathEdit

Higgs died after a short illness at home in Edinburgh on 8 April 2024, aged 94.<ref name="NYT-20240409">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>