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Peter Higgs, the LHC switch-on, and the Quest for the Higgs Boson

Early in the morning of September 10th 2008, at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN) on the French/Swiss border near Geneva, the largest scientific experiment in the world was officially switched on and started a venture that includes the quest for what is known the Higgs boson. The machine, 27 kilometres in circumference and 100-150 metres underground, will collide protons with protons at unprecedented energies.

Peter Higgs, a particle-physics theorist at the University of Edinburgh, showed in 1964 how to give mass to fundamental particles that would otherwise remain massless. Peter's work led to the so-called Standard Model of elementary particle interactions which has been confirmed by decades of work at particle physics laboratories around the world, but it also predicted the existence of a mysterious new particle that became known as the Higgs boson. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been built to search for the elusive boson, a discovery that could lead to Peter being awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. (more)

Peter Higgs at CERN

Photographs from Peter Higgs' visit to CERN, Spring 2008.

A brief history of the Higgs mechanism

The electroweak theory, which unifies the electromagnetic and weak interactions of elementary particles, has, since 1970, received experimental support to a precision unprecedented in the history of science. This unification involves a close relationship between the massless photon, which carries the long-range electromagnetic force, and the W and Z vector bosons, which carry the short-range weak force and must therefore be very massive. Prior to the invention of the Higgs mechanism, it was not known how to formulate a consistent relativistic field theory with a local symmetry which could contain both massless and massive force carriers. (more)

Biography of Peter Higgs

Peter Higgs was born on 29 May 1929 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He graduated with 1st class Honours in Physics from King's College, University of London, in 1950. A year later, he was awarded an MSc and started research, initially under the supervision of Charles Coulson and, subsequently, Christopher Longuet-Higgins. In 1954, he was awarded a PhD for a thesis entitled "Some Problems in the Theory of Molecular Vibrations", work which signalled the start of his life-long interest in the application of the ideas of symmetry to physical systems. (more)

Photographs