Peter Higgs

• Born: May 29, 1929
• Place of Birth: Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
• Died: April 8, 2024
• Place of Death: Edinburgh, Scotland

British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs proposed in 1964 the existence of a subatomic particle to account for the origin of mass in other subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In July 2012, his predictions were verified, providing an experimental basis for a complete revolution in unified field theory.

Background

Peter Ware Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 29, 1929. His father, Thomas Higgs, was a sound engineer for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). From 1930 through 1941, Higgs lived and attended elementary schools in Birmingham. Britain’s involvement in World War II interrupted his formal early schooling, and he was taught at home by his mother, Gertrude Higgs, in Bristol. From 1940 to 1941, he first attended Halesowen Grammar School in Worcestershire, then Cotham Grammar School in Bristol from 1941 to 1946, and the City of London School from 1946 to 1947. While at Cotham Grammar School, he learned of and was inspired by the work of Paul Dirac, a former Cotham student and one of the founders of the field of quantum mechanics.

In 1947, Higgs began studies in physics at King’s College London. In 1950, he was awarded a bachelor of science degree with first-class honors in physics. Studying under Charles Coulson and Christopher Longuet-Higgins, Higgs focused on symmetry in physical systems during graduate school. He completed his master of science degree in 1951 and his doctorate in 1954.

Particle Physicist

Following the completion of his PhD, Higgs took a position as a senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. An ICI Research Fellowship took him back to London in 1956, where he worked and lectured in mathematics at University College and then Imperial College. In 1960, he returned to Edinburgh to lecture in mathematical physics at the university’s Tait Institute. He was promoted to professor of theoretical physics in 1980, a position he held until his retirement in 1996, when he became professor emeritus.

When Higgs began his career, theoretical physicists were already working to develop what Albert Einstein called a unified field theory that explains how the universe works in terms of physical matter and all the forces that affect it. The most important theoretical model that twenty-first-century physicists use is called the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It shows the basic subatomic particles and how they comprise matter as we know it. For example, protons and neutrons are made of different combinations of a variety of particles called quarks. Electrons and neutrinos are composed of particles called leptons. The Standard Model also shows bosons, which are particles that carry forces such as electricity and light. Bosons include photons, gluons, Z bosons, and W bosons.

One of the greatest problems in the development of the unified field theory has been the relationship between energy and mass, which is the primary characteristic of physical matter. Higgs’s work demonstrated the principles that relate energy, mass, and matter. The Higgs mechanism, a process described by Higgs and five other physicists in 1964, states that through interaction with a universal field, a subatomic particle (later named the Higgs boson) decays and transforms massless energy into the mass of other fundamental particles, particularly protons and neutrons. In other words, the Higgs boson explains how other particles have the physical property of mass.

Particle physicists began to search for evidence of the Higgs boson in high-energy particle collision experiments in 1975, following the formalization of Higgs’s theories into a testable hypothesis over the intervening years since 1964. On July 4, 2012, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN, Conseil Européan pour la Recherche Nucléaire) announced that they had identified results consistent with the existence of the Higgs boson. Although the results were not definitive proof that the particle exists, they still provided strong verification of Higgs’s work and represented one step closer to the development of the unified theory. By 2014, scientists who had continued to research the findings declared that because they had observed the decay of the particle considered necessary to truly identify it as the Higgs boson, the particle discovered by CERN was indeed the Higgs boson.

Higgs’s work garnered him recognition from his peers and the scientific community. He received numerous awards including the Saltire Society & Royal Bank of Scotland Scottish Science Award (1990), the Royal Society of Edinburgh James Scott Prize Lectureship (1993), the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics (1997), and the Stockholm Academy of Sciences Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture and Medal (2009). He also received honorary degrees from the Universities of Bristol (1997), Edinburgh (1998), Glasgow (2002), Swansea (2008), Kings College London (2009), University College London (2010), and Cambridge (2012), among others. In 2012, Higgs became a member of the Order of Companions of Honor, one of the highest royal honors offered by the British monarchy, in recognition of his significant achievements in the field of physics. In 2013, he and Belgian theoretical physicist François Englert shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution to the theoretical existence of the significant Higgs boson.

Following his Nobel Prize in 2013, Higgs stated in interviews that he believed that he could not have made the same kind of discovery that he did in the 1960s in the faster-paced, high-pressure academic science climate of the twenty-first century.

On April 8, 2024, Higgs died at his home in Edinburgh, Scotland. He was ninety-four.

Impact

Philosophers and scientists have sought to explain the existence of the physical world and of the universe in general for thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers, from whom came the concept of atoms, tried to perceive the physical world as being constructed from properties within an all-pervasive “ether.” Alchemists, natural philosophers, and mystics since then have also tried to explain the universe in a similar way. Their works and studies eventually produced the modern atomic theory based on the principles of quantum mechanics developed by Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein, and many other physicists. At the heart of this effort is the desire for a unified “theory of everything” that describes the essence of matter. The major stumbling block for such a theory has been identifying the fundamental relationship between matter, mass, and energy. Higgs’s work provided a viable means of defining and identifying that relationship, with the Higgs field (which gives rise to the Higgs boson) perhaps fulfilling the role of the “universal ether” and the Higgs boson providing the means whereby energy becomes mass and matter. Higgs's life's work held the promise of revolutionizing the science of physics with the development of a complete, unified theory.

Personal Life

At Edinburgh, Higgs met Jody Williamson, a linguist. They were married in 1962 and had two sons. Christopher Higgs (b. 1966) became a computer scientist, while Jonathan Higgs (b. 1969) became a musician. The couple divorced in 1972, and Jody Williamson Higgs died on February 3, 2008, of leukemia.

Bibliography

Close, Frank. The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe. Basic, 2011.

Martin, Victoria. “A Layperson’s Guide to the Higgs Boson.” The University of Edinburgh. School of Physics and Astronomy / University of Edinburgh, 2 July 2012, www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/laypersons-guide. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Overbye, Dennis. “A Pioneer as Elusive as His Particle.” The New York Times, 15 Mar. 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/science/a-discoverer-as-elusive-as-his-particle-.html. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Overbye, Dennis. “Peter Higgs, Nobelist Who Predicted the ‘God Particle,’ Dies at 94.” The New York Times, 10 Apr. 2024, www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/science/peter-higgs-dead.html. Accessed 6 Aug. 2024.

Sample, Ian. Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science. Basic, 2010.

Tully, Christopher G. Elementary Particle Physics in a Nutshell. Princeton UP, 2011.