| Authorised form of name | Higgs; Peter Ware; theoretical physicist |
| Nationality | British |
| Place of birth | Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England |
| Date of birth | 29 May 1929 |
| Place of death | Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Date of death | 20240408 |
| Occupation | Theoretical physicist and Professor |
| Research field | Physics |
| Quantum physics |
| Applied mathematics |
| Particle physics |
| Theoretical physics |
| Activity | Education:
Cotham School Grammar School, Bristol (1941-1946); City of London School (1946-1947); King's College London BSc, MSc, PhD (1950-54)
Career:
Senior Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh (1954–56); lectures in various capacities at Imperial College London, and University College London; joined the staff at Edinburgh University, taking up the lectureship at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics (1960); promoted to Reader (1970); Personal Chair of Theoretical Physics (1980); retired and became Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics (1996); experiments at the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson (2012); died following a short illness.
Honours:
CH (Order of the Companions of Honour: Member of the Order), 2013 New Year's Honours List - 'Professor Peter Higgs is an inspirational figure with international recognition for his theories in particle physics, and in particular for his work around the Higgs boson, which was the most sought after particle in modern physics. The announcement in July 2012 of a particle like the one he proposed 48 years previously completes the Standard Model of particle physics'.
Medals and prizes:
Rutherford Medal 1984
Dirac Medal and Prize 1997
High Energy and Particle Physics Prize 1997
Wolf Prize in Physics 2004
Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture and Medal 2009
J. J. Sakurai Prize 2010
Edinburgh Award 2011
Nobel Prize for Physics, jointly with François Englert 2013
Princess Asturias Award 2015
Memberships:
FRSE |
| Membership category | Fellow |
| Date of election | 17/03/1983 |
| Age at election | 53 |
| RSActivity | Medals and prizes:
Hughes Medal 1981; Royal Society Copley Medal, 2015 |
| Relationships | Parents: Thomas Ware Higgs (1898–1962), sound engineer, and Gertrude Maude née Coghill (1895–1969).
Spouse: Jody Williamson (m. 1963; separated 1972), lecturer in linguistics, Edinburgh University.
Children: Christopher and Jonny Higgs. |
| OtherInfo | Made invaluable contributions to our understanding of the Universe on the smallest scales. His work on fundamental particle interactions, especially those distinguished by the appearance of the so-called Higgs boson, inspired much of high energy physics research over recent decades.
At its meeting in Oviedo, the Jury for the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, made up of Mr Juan Luis Arsuaga Ferreras, Mr Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturáin, Mr Luis Fernández-Vega Sanz, Ms Cristina Garmendia Mendizábal, Ms María del Rosario Heras Celemín, Mr Bernardo Hernández González, Mr Emilio Lora-Tamayo D’ocón, Mr José Antonio Martínez Álvarez, Mr Amador Menéndez Velázquez, Ms María Teresa Miras Portugal, Mr Ginés Morata Pérez, Mr Enrique Moreno González, Mr César Nombela Cano, Mr Eduardo Punset Casals, Ms Marta Sanz-Solé, Mr Manuel Toharia Cortés, chaired by Mr Pedro Miguel Echenique Landiríbar and with Mr Vicente Gotor Santamaría acting as secretary, have unanimously decided to bestow the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research jointly on physicists Peter Higgs (UK) and François Englert (Belgium) and the international institution CERN, the European Laboratory of Particle Physics, for the theoretical prediction and experimental detection of the Higgs boson. Peter Higgs FRS is amongst the recipients of the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.
The award was made jointly to physicists Peter Higgs FRS (UK) and François Englert (Belgium) and the international institution CERN, the European Laboratory of Particle Physics, for the theoretical prediction and experimental detection of the Higgs boson. On receiving the award in recognition for his pioneering work, Peter Higgs said: “I am delighted and greatly honoured to be awarded the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, shared with François Englert and CERN. I too wish to pay tribute to the late Robert Brout who, with his colleague François Englert, initiated a programme of theoretical research, too often associated with my name alone”.
Established in 1981, the essential aims of the Prince of Asturias Awards are to contribute to encouraging and promoting the scientific, cultural and humanistic values that form part of mankind’s universal heritage
In 1964, the pioneering work of Higgs and of Englert and Brout (the latter died in 2011) established the theoretical basis for the existence of the so-called Higgs boson. This particle completes the Standard Model, which describes the fundamental components of Nature, and is responsible for certain elementary particles possessing mass. For nearly half a century, efforts to find the Higgs boson were unsuccessful due to the enormous experimental difficulties associated with its precise and unequivocal detection. The Higgs boson was finally identified in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS detectors of the LHC particle accelerator at CERN, a milestone for the entire scientific community.
The discovery of the Higgs boson is a prime example of how Europe has led a collective effort to solve one of the deepest mysteries of physics.
Also known for the Higgs field, Higgs mechanism and Spontaneous symmetry breaking.
He was an activist with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and a member of Greenpeace. |
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| Source | The Royal Society Fellows Directory, Professor Peter Higgs CH FRS, [URL:https://royalsociety.org/people/peter-higgs-11615/; last accessed: 29/01/2025]
The University of Edinburgh, 09 April 2024, Obituary: Pioneering scientist Professor Peter Higgs dies aged 94, [URL: https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2024/pioneering-scientist-professor-peter-higgs-dies-ag; last accessed: 29/01/2025] |
| Code | NA6207 |