"Remembering Peter Higgs: A Famed Figure in Particle Physics"
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01069-6
The scientific community is in mourning following the passing of British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, who died at the age of 94. Higgs, renowned for predicting the existence of the particle that bears his name, leaves behind an indelible mark on our understanding of the universe.
Sixty years ago, Higgs proposed the idea of an invisible field that imbues other elementary particles with mass, a crucial component of the standard model of particle physics. His visionary work laid the foundation for the discovery of the Higgs boson, a landmark achievement that was finally realized at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012.
"Besides his outstanding contributions to particle physics, Peter was a very special person, an immensely inspiring figure for physicists around the world, a man of rare modesty, a great teacher and someone who explained physics in a very simple yet profound way," said Fabiola Gianotti, director-general of CERN, the organization behind the LHC.
Higgs' humility and approachability were as remarkable as his scientific breakthroughs. Physicists fondly recall their interactions with the renowned scientist, from helping him into a cab after a museum event to cherishing his autograph on a newspaper covering the Higgs boson discovery.
"He disliked the limelight but was comfortable with friends and colleagues," said Frank Close, a physicist at the University of Oxford and author of a book on Higgs' life. "His boson took 48 years to appear, and when the Nobel was announced, he had disappeared to his favourite sea food bar in Leith."
The search for the Higgs boson captivated the scientific community for decades, and Higgs' contributions were recognized with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013, which he shared with François Englert. Since then, researchers at the LHC have been working to unravel the mysteries of the Higgs boson, aiming to gain a deeper understanding of its role in the universe.
"We're still on an exciting journey to figure out whether some further predictions are true, namely whether the Higgs boson interacts with itself in the predicted way, and whether it might decay to other beyond the Standard Model particles," said Sinead Farrington, a physicist at the University of Edinburgh.
The passing of Peter Higgs marks the end of an era, but his legacy will continue to shape our understanding of the cosmos for generations to come. As physicist and science writer Matt Strassler poignantly observed, "Higgs was a fortunate scientist: he lived to see his insight at age 30 turn up in experiments 50 years later. His role and influence in our understanding of the #universe will be remembered for millennia."
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01069-6
Comments
Post a Comment