Peter Higgs
Posted in Physics at 21:00 on 12 April 2024
So the proposer of the Higgs boson, the so-called – but erroneously called – ‘God’ particle, has died. At the age of 94. Not bad going.
It seems he was a fairy humble man and the attention his Nobel Prize brought him wasn’t to his taste.
The discovery of the Higgs boson was a fine example of the scientific method. Its existence was predicted by Higgs’s calculations but failure to find it at the appropriate energies would have necessitated the theory underpinning his ideas would need to be abandoned. As it is the reason why particles have mass seems to have been established beyond doubt.
Peter Ware Higgs: 29/5/1929 – 8/4/2024. So it goes.
Tags: Higgs Boson, Nobel Prize, Peter Higgs, Physics
Janusz
13 April 2024 at 02:05
The only nobel laureate I ever met struck me as the archetype of the dishevelled, absence-minded professor. He showed up at a conference with a university colleague. It was from the colleague that I first heard the cliché about brilliant mathematicians doing all their best work before they turn thirty.
jackdeighton
13 April 2024 at 17:48
Janusz,
I have never met a Nobel laureate but I have encountered some absent-minded professors. And it’s not just mathematicians that produce their best work before thirty. Pop musicians do too. And probably most novelists.