The father of the “God particle” – physicist Peter Higgs is dead
Published: Tuesday, Apr 9th 2024, 19:10
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If Peter Higgs had only started his career as a researcher today, he might not have amounted to much. At least that's what the Brit believed himself. He was not productive enough by today's standards, he told The Guardian newspaper - after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Belgian François Englert in 2013. Now the "father" of the Higgs particle has died at the age of 94.
He didn't want to be called that himself. His name was linked to the Higgs particle more by chance, he said in the midst of the Nobel Prize hype - it was a group effort after all. He and Englert had come up with the theory independently of each other.
"I'm getting the award for something that took me two or three weeks in 1964. That was only a very small part of my life," said Higgs. His idea at the time: just as gravity gives things their weight, particles give them their mass. An idea that would make the physicist world-famous decades later.
Theory while hiking
Allegedly while hiking in the Scottish Highlands, Higgs came up with this theory as a young researcher at the University of Edinburgh, which no one was able to prove for almost half a century. The breakthrough finally came at the Cern nuclear research center in Switzerland. Many thought that the research facility also deserved the Nobel Prize in Physics for this - but organizations are not honoured with it.
When researchers announced the discovery of the Higgs particle in Geneva on July 4, 2012, the namesake was in the audience. It was a great moment in physics. But what made the proof of his particle so spectacular? With his theory, Higgs provided the answer to an important question about the universe: What gives all existing things their shape and size? Or to put it another way: without a Higgs particle, there is no mass in the universe.
Atheist Higgs against the term "God particle"
One publisher therefore luridly referred to the Higgs boson as the "God particle". Neither the atheist who gave it its name nor other particle researchers liked this. Nevertheless, like the theory of relativity, many people are familiar with the "God particle". It was the last unknown building block in the standard model of particle physics and solved the dilemma that many theorists had: The elementary particles in their model had no mass.
The Higgs mechanism works like a kind of syrup that sticks to elementary particles, slows them down and thus gives them mass. The Higgs field, the syrup, manifests itself via the Higgs particle.
Judging by the attention that poured in on him from the moment of his discovery, Higgs was something of a physics pop star. The scientist sometimes described the spotlight as a nuisance. The older he got, the fewer interviews he gave. Instead, the father of two wanted to spend more time with his family.
The hustle and bustle was too much for him
The list of scientific prizes and honorary titles awarded to the researcher is long. However, he gratefully declined the title of "Sir" in 1999. It was too early for that, he later told the BBC - and he didn't want such a title anyway.
He was also a critical spirit in other respects: Higgs stayed away from the award ceremony for the prestigious Wolf Prize in Jerusalem in protest against Israel's Palestinian policy. He supported the anti-nuclear weapons movement - but when it also turned against the civilian use of nuclear power, that was the end of it.
Higgs was always a modest man. This did not change his pop star status until the end of his life: when he was already over 80 years old, the University of Edinburgh still received masses of requests not only for interviews, but also for lectures, which he accepted less and less often, according to a spokesperson.
Higgs once said that he wanted to retire for good at the age of 85. However, he was not really able to keep this resolution. Nevertheless, the famous physicist accepted the odd invitation. Because the interest in his person remained unbroken until the end.
©Keystone/SDA
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