The university mourns the passing of renowned physicist Professor Peter Higgs, who passed away after a short illness. Professor Higgs is famous for predicting the existence of a fundamental particle of physics that bears his name: the Higgs boson. He was a researcher at the University in 1964 when he predicted the particle that allowed other particles to gain mass.
His idea was confirmed by experiments nearly 50 years later, in 2012, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. This discovery was followed by the award of the Nobel Prize to Professor Higgs in 2013.
Legacy of science
On May 29, 1929, Peter Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He received his physics degree from King’s College London in 1950. He graduated with a master’s in science the following year and with a doctorate in 1954. When he was a young man, he went on a summer festival tour and eventually settled in Edinburgh.
After accepting a lectureship at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics in 1960, Professor Higgs became a member of the University of Edinburgh faculty. In 1970, he received a promotion to readership, and in 1980, he held a personal position in theoretical physics. After retiring in 1996, he was made an honorary professor.
Several years later, in 2012, experiments performed at the particle accelerator of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN finally confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson. The following year, Professor Higgs received the Nobel Prize in Physics together with Professor François Englert of the Free University of Brussels.
That same year, he was admitted to the highest royal honor, the Order of Companions of Honor. In Edinburgh, a plaque honoring the professor’s legacy is erected on Roxburgh Street. The location of his initial development of the Higgs boson particle theory is commemorated by this installation. On April 8, Professor Higgs departed quietly from his residence.