Peter Higgs obituary

Peter Higgs was a theoretical physicist who recently passed away at the age of 94. In 1964, he proposed that the universe contains a pervasive essence that can be shown as particles. This concept motivated significant funding from governments to search for what is now called Higgs bosons.

The Higgs mechanism has a significant role in regulating the speed of thermonuclear fusion in the sun, without which the solar system would have ceased to exist before life on earth had the chance to evolve. It is believed that the structure of atoms and matter, and possible even existence itself, may be a direct result of this mechanism. The proof of the mechanism's validity was confirmed in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson through experimentation.

The boson, a particle in physics, was dubbed as "the God particle" by Nobel Prize winner Leon Lederman. Higgs, who didn't believe in God, disagreed with this characterization, but the name became popular and brought attention to the concept as well as Higgs himself, who received a Nobel Prize for his work on the boson in 2013.

As a young teacher of mathematical physics during the early 1960s at Edinburgh University, Higgs developed a fascination for the profound and intriguing connections between the properties of mathematical symmetries found in the equations that define fundamental laws and the structures that emerge from them.

In the blog, it is explained that when a droplet of water is in space, it looks the same no matter which direction you observe it from. This happens because it doesn't feel the gravity of the Earth. The shape is mathematically described as spherically symmetric. However, when the water freezes and becomes a snowflake, it takes a different shape with a different symmetry. The shape of a snowflake looks the same only when rotated through multiples of 60 degrees. It's interesting that the underlying equations describing the behaviour of water molecules remain the same despite the change in shape.

Back in 1960, a physicist from Japan and America named Yoichiro Nambu aroused curiosity in the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking.

After being inspired by Nambu's work, Higgs came up with his own theory in 1964. This theory provides an explanation on how equations that require massless particles, like the quantum theory of the electromagnetic field which results in the massless photon, can lead to the formation of particles with mass through the Higgs mechanism.

In 1971, Gerardus 't Hooft proposed an idea that ultimately guided his explanation of the weak force. The weak force is responsible for radioactivity and involves a bulky "W" particle acting as a counterpart to the weightless photon. Later on, the W was discovered in 1983 and earned Nobel prizes for the experiment and the theorists who predicted its existence. The triumph was made possible with the Higgs mechanism, which regulated the mathematical process involved in explaining the weak force.

After Nambu was awarded the Nobel prize in 2008, it started to appear probable that the path was being paved for Higgs to eventually receive acknowledgement.

Higgs always emphasized that there was a problem because he wasn't the only one who had come up with the idea of mass appearing "spontaneously." Other people had already talked about similar ideas before him, such as Philip Anderson, a physicist who studied condensed matter, and Robert Brout and François Englert from Belgium, who had published before Higgs did. Tom Kibble, who used to work with Higgs at Imperial College, along with two other colleagues, also wrote a paper with similar ideas a few weeks after the others.

Higgs made a valid argument about the boson being unique. He pointed out that when symmetry is broken in certain situations, a big particle should show up. This particle would be more likely to interact with other particles that have a higher mass.

The identification of this subatomic particle has the potential to provide concrete proof that the theory accurately depicts the natural world. While this specific boson may have been hinted at in prior research, Higgs was the one to clearly explain its significance within the realm of particle physics.

The famous "Higgs boson" became the symbol of the Large Hadron Collider. Back in the 90s, the science minister William Waldegrave asked for a written explanation of the Higgs boson to help make a case for government funding.

One of the winners of the award was David Miller, who compared Margaret Thatcher to a big particle moving through a party and attracting followers. He is from University College London. Even though Higgs disagreed with Thatcher's political views, he felt fine with the analogy.

Being famous never made him feel at ease. In 2008, during the preparations for the activation of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the media focused on the search for the Higgs boson.

Higgs believed that Cern had made a mistake by emphasizing the importance of "the" boson. He consistently emphasized that multiple researchers had come up with similar concepts and that it was unfair to name the particle after him. He humbly referred to the discovery of the boson as "tying up loose ends" and considered the LHC's most thrilling prospect to be its ability to uncover the mysteries of dark matter and other unconventional physics.

However, back in July 2012, Cern made public the finding of a particle that possessed qualities similar to those of the Higgs boson. This generated a lot of excitement in the media, and Higgs unwaveringly embraced his newfound celebrity status.

Even though many physicists were confident that they had found the boson named after its founder, they needed to analyze it further for a few months to be absolutely certain. Therefore, the Nobel prize for 2012 was awarded to someone else. However, in 2013, the data was overwhelmingly convincing, and there was a widespread belief that this would be the year the discovery would be confirmed.

At this point, it had been almost 50 years since Higgs published his initial paper on this topic. In an exciting and tense moment, Higgs' awaited victory announcement was postponed by one hour because the Nobel committee had difficulty reaching the scientist who is known for being very private. Knowing the media would be interested in his success, Higgs chose to be in a different location when the announcement was made. He informed colleagues that he intended to vacation in the Scottish north-west highlands.

As the day drew closer, he came to the realization that it was not a wise idea to follow through with the previous plan during that season. Instead, he chose to be present elsewhere during the ideal moment. At approximately 11am on October 8th, he departed from home and arrived at Leith by noon, where he resided at a pub named the Vintage located by the water. It was known that the Vintage served delectable cuisine and commendable beer, and this was no secret to Higgs himself.

Due to Higgs' reluctance to use modern technology such as mobile phones and the internet, the Swedish Academy had trouble contacting him for over an hour. Despite their efforts, they were unsuccessful and proceeded to announce Higgs and Englert of the Université Libre de Bruxelles as the winners of the Nobel prize for physics to the public. Ironically, the news had spread worldwide by 2pm, but Higgs remained unaware of his win. Sadly, Brout, Englert's colleague, was unable to receive the award as Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, having passed away in 2011.

Higgs remembered that he went home after some time had passed, but he didn't know what had happened. Before heading home, he decided to stop by an art show. He did this because he thought it was too soon to go home because there might be reporters there.

Around three in the afternoon, he was strolling down Heriot Row, making his way to his flat in the adjacent street when a car stopped close by Queen Street Gardens. A woman emerged from the vehicle, in quite a fervent state and approached Higgs to say: "My daughter has just called me from London to tell me about the award." Higgs responded by asking, "What award?" Initially, he was joking around, but it was then that he received confirmation of his expectations.

He achieved his objective, saying, "I was able to enter my house without causing any further harm apart from encountering a lone photographer." More than ten years have passed and the primary goal of the LHC is now to generate numerous Higgs bosons to comprehend the fundamental nature of their omnipresent composition.

During the coronavirus lockdown, I spent many hours on the phone with him on weekends as part of my research for the biography Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass (to be published in 2022). When I asked him about his thoughts on the public's reaction to the boson, he stated that it had "ruined" his life. I found this statement surprising, considering that discovering the boson, having one's theories confirmed, receiving praise from colleagues, and winning a Nobel prize all sound like positive things. He explained that it disrupted his previously tranquil lifestyle by drawing unwanted attention. He prefers to work alone and come up with ideas on his own, rather than be put in the spotlight.

For over 50 years, Higgs worked as a theoretical physicist at Edinburgh University. Despite this, numerous media reports labeled him as a "Scottish physicist", but it's important to note that he was actually born in Newcastle to English parents named Thomas Ware Higgs and Gertrude Maud (nee Coghill).

Peter's dad worked as a sound engineer at the BBC. They lived in Birmingham for his early childhood until the BBC moved to Bristol due to safety concerns during World War II. The Higgs family hoped to evade air raids but unfortunately, Bristol's city center was bombed the following weekend.

When Peter Higgs was young, he went to Cotham grammar school in Bristol. A famous person who went there before him was the Nobel prize-winning physicist, Paul Dirac, and his name could be seen on the board of people who achieved great things. Higgs was inspired by him, but at first, Higgs focussed on mathematics instead of physics. Higgs's father had a lot of maths books, which Peter read and made him very smart in that subject. But, in 1946, Higgs heard the two Nobel prize-winning physicists, Cecil Powell and Nevill Mott, talk about the atomic bomb programme in Bristol and this made him interested in physics. Even though he ended up being a physicist, Higgs was also part of the group, CND, which did not want any more nuclear bombs to be made.

He attended King's College London where he focused on theoretical physics and later earned a doctorate degree in 1954. His research topic was on molecular physics whereby he used the concept of symmetry to examine molecular structures. Eventually, his area of interest shifted towards particle physics, even though his office was located on the same corridor as Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins- two scientists who were actively involved in the discovery of DNA structure. However, his research work did not have a direct relationship with their project.

He received prestigious research fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and in London at University College and Imperial College. He began his teaching career as a mathematics lecturer at University College London before moving to the University of Edinburgh in 1960 where he devoted the remainder of his research career. He began his tenure at Edinburgh as a lecturer in mathematical physics and was promoted to reader in 1970 and professor of theoretical physics in 1980. His contributions to the field were widely recognized and he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1974 and as a FRS in 1983.

He encountered his soon-to-be partner, Jody Williamson, who was a linguist, at a gathering for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1960. The couple tied the knot in 1963 and later welcomed two sons named Christopher and Jonathan. Although their marriage ended in 1972, they continued to be amicable until Jody's passing in 2008.

Apart from the Nobel prize he won in 2013, Higgs was also honored with several other awards. He received an abundance of honorary degrees, but also won prestigious prizes such as the 1997 Dirac medal and prize, presented by the Institute of Physics. His achievements were recognized with the Wolf prize in physics in 2004, followed by the Sakurai prize of the American Physical Society in 2010. In 2013, he was awarded the Edinburgh medal and appointed Companion of Honour. Two years later, he became a recipient of the Copley medal, which happens to be the oldest scientific prize offered by the Royal Society.

He is survived by his children who are male.