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The Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist Professor Peter Higgs, whose prediction of the Higgs boson helped revolutionise understanding of the universe, has died aged 94.
Higgs, who died peacefully at home on Monday, saw the groundbreaking theoretical work he and others did in the 1960s triumphantly confirmed by experiments at the Cern particle accelerator almost half a century later.
The detection of the Higgs boson in 2012 at Cern, the European Organization for Nuclear Research near Geneva, completed the so-called Standard Model of particle physics. It confirmed the existence of a fundamental field that, as Higgs had postulated, filled the universe and gave mass to the stars, planets and life within.
Figures from across the scientific community offered tributes on Tuesday. Cern, whose foundation in 1954 capitalised on the intensifying interest in how particle physics could unlock the universe’s mysteries, said Higgs’s contribution had been “outstanding”.
He was an “immensely inspiring figure for physicists across the world” who explained the discipline in “a very simple and yet profound way”, said Fabiola Gianotti, Cern director-general.
“An important piece of Cern’s history and accomplishments is linked to him. I am very saddened, and will miss him sorely,” said Gianotti who, like others, noted Higgs’s “rare modesty”.
Higgs was a “giant of theoretical physics”, said Mark Thomson, professor of particle physics at Cambridge university and the UK candidate to be Cern’s next director-general.
“His work, alongside that of others, truly revolutionised our understanding of the universe at its most basic level,” Thomson said. “The development of this theory was a massive conceptual leap from a brilliant mind.”
Higgs’s name would “be remembered as long as we do physics in the form of the Higgs Boson”, Prof Brian Cox, the British physicist and TV personality, said in a post on X.
Higgs’s theoretical work delved into the subatomic world of quantum fields that, as Cern puts it, “dictate what nature can and cannot do”. Higgs theorised how changes in the field later named after him gave mass to particles shortly after the Big Bang that created the universe.
The insights of Higgs and his peers opened the way into an ongoing mission of fundamental research into the universe’s past and likely future. Cern’s 23 member states are considering a €16bn expansion to build a new particle accelerator more than three times the circumference of the existing doughnut-shaped Large Hadron Collider.
He won the 2013 Nobel Prize for this work, sharing it with the Belgian theoretical physicist François Englert.
Higgs was a “great teacher and mentor”, according to Edinburgh university, where he spent most of his academic career.
“Peter Higgs was a remarkable individual — a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us,” said Prof Sir Peter Mathieson, Edinburgh’s principal and vice-chancellor.
“His pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”
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