Legacy of a Pioneer: Remembering Peter Higgs, the Physicist Who Predicted the Higgs Boson

Peter Higgs, the renowned theoretical physicist who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, passed away at the age of 94. The University of Edinburgh confirmed his death on April 8 after a brief illness. Born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1929, Higgs earned his doctoral degree from King’s College London in 1954.

In his 1964 paper, he proposed the existence of the Higgs boson as a particle that gives mass to other particles through interaction with the Higgs field. Detecting the Higgs boson proved to be a formidable challenge due to its rarity and rapid decay, but in 2012 it was finally detected using the Large Hadron Collider in France and Switzerland. The discovery confirmed Higgs’ theory and solidified his legacy as one of the greatest theoretical physicists of our time.

Higgs had been a professor at the University of Edinburgh since 1960 until his retirement in 1996. He was best known for his groundbreaking work in predicting the masses of subatomic particles and was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013 alongside François Englert for their discovery of the Higgs boson. His work has had a profound impact on particle physics and will continue to inspire future generations of scientists.