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Peter Higgs and the Search for the Higgs Boson

Peter Higgs and the Search for the Higgs Boson

Since Peter Higgs and others conceived of the Higgs boson, physicists have been trying to prove that the particle actually exists. If they can do so, they think that the Higgs boson will provide the missing piece of unified field theory, a single theory that explains how the universe works in terms of physical matter and the forces that affect it.

In 1964, Peter Higgs and others suggested that there must be a relationship between mass and masslessness. Higgs stated that this relationship is detectable through the interaction of the Higgs boson and an omnipresent field, the Higgs field. During the interaction, the Higgs boson theoretically decomposes into protons and neutrons and gives them mass in the process. Higgs’s theoretical work became integral to the Standard Model of particle physics after 1971, by which time Tini Veltman and Gerard t’Hooft had worked out some of the mathematical problems with Higgs’s theory.

In the 1970s, different quark particles began to be observed and identified and the pieces of the Standard Model puzzle started to come together. In 1975, experimental work toward identifying the Higgs boson began. W bosons and Z bosons were discovered in the 1980s, though the mechanism by which they acquired their mass was unidentified, and was believed to be dependent on the Higgs boson. By the end of the year 2000, the Higgs boson had not itself been detected, but each subsequent observation refined the range of masses within which it should exist. The masses of such particles are given in terms of how much energy they have relative to other particles, and in 2001 the mass for the Higgs boson had been narrowed to a range between 115 and 158 gigaelectron volts (GeV; one billion electron volts).

The search for the Higgs boson continued at CERN, located in Geneva, Switzerland. CERN houses the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which, with a ring of superconducting magnets some 27 kilometers in diameter and situated about 100 meters below the border between France and Switzerland, is the largest and most powerful particle collider ever constructed. The LHC operates at energies of up to one teraelectron volt (TeV; one trillion electron volts) to accelerate particle streams to 99.99998% of the speed of light before bringing them into collision. Particle physicists measure the interactions of the accelerated particles and the particles that they produce in the collisions to verify the mathematical predictions of quantum mechanics theory, including that of the Higgs boson. On July 4, 2012, CERN reported having identified results consistent with the formation of the Higgs boson, a particle with a mass of 125.3 GeV, which is about 125 times the mass of a single proton.


Great Lives from History: Scientists and Science

Peter Higgs

by Richard M. Renneboog, MS

British physicist

British physicist Peter Higgs proposed in 1964 the existence of a subatomic particle to account for the origin of mass in other subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons. In July 2012, his predictions were verified, providing an experimental basis for a complete revolution in unified field theory.

Born: May 29, 1929; Newcastle upon Tyne, England

Primary field: Physics

Specialties: Theoretical physics; quantum mechanics

Early Life

Peter Ware Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, on May 29, 1929. His father, Thomas Higgs, was a sound engineer for the British Broadcasting Company (BBC). From 1930 through 1941, Higgs lived and attended elementary schools in Birmingham. Britain’s involvement in World War II interrupted his formal early schooling, and he was taught at home by his mother, Gertrude Higgs, in Bristol. From 1940 to 1941, he attended Halesowen Grammar School in Worcestershire, then Cotham Grammar School in Bristol from 1941 to 1946 and the City of London School from 1946 to 1947. While at Cotham Grammar School, he learned of and was inspired by the work of Paul Dirac, a former Cotham student and one of the founders of the field of quantum mechanics. In 1947, he began studies in physics at King’s College London. In 1950, Higgs was awarded the bachelor of science degree, with first class honors in physics. Studying under Charles Coulson and Christopher Longuet-Higgins, Higgs focused on symmetry in physical systems during graduate school. He completed his master of science degree in 1951 and his doctorate in 1954.

Life’s Work

Following the completion of his PhD, Higgs took a position as a senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh. An ICI Research Fellowship took him back to London in 1956, where he worked and lectured in mathematics at University College and then Imperial College. In 1960 he returned to Edinburgh to lecture in mathematical physics at the university’s Tait Institute. He was promoted to professor of theoretical physics in 1980, a position he held until his retirement in 1996, when he became professor emeritus. At Edinburgh he met Jody Williamson, a linguist. They were married in 1962 and had two sons. Christopher Higgs, born in 1966, is a computer scientist; Jonathan Higgs, born in 1969, is a musician. The couple divorced in 1972, and Jody Williamson Higgs died on February 3, 2008, from leukemia.

When Peter Higgs began his career, theoretical physicists were already working to develop what Albert Einstein called a unified field theory that explains how the universe works in terms of physical matter and all the forces that affect it. The most important theoretical model that twenty-first-century physicists use is called the Standard Model of particle physics. It shows the basic subatomic particles and how they comprise matter as we know it. For example, protons and neutrons are made of different combinations of a variety of particles called quarks. Electrons and neutrinos are composed of particles called leptons. The Standard Model also shows bosons, which are particles that carry forces, such as electricity and light. Bosons include photons, gluons, Z bosons, and W bosons.

One of the greatest problems in the development of the unified field theory has been the relationship between energy and mass, which is the primary characteristic of physical matter. Higgs’s work demonstrates the principles that relate energy, mass, and matter. The Higgs mechanism, a process described by Higgs and five other physicists in 1964, states that through interaction with a universal field, a subatomic particle (later named the Higgs boson) decays and transforms massless energy into the mass of other fundamental particles, particularly protons and neutrons. In other words, the Higgs boson explains how other particles have the physical property of mass.

Particle physicists began to search for evidence of the Higgs boson in high-energy particle collision experiments in 1975, following the formalization of Higgs’s theories into a testable hypothesis over the intervening years since 1964. On July 4, 2012, researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (also known as CERN, Conseil Européan pour la Recherche Nucléaire) announced that they had identified results consistent with the existence of the Higgs boson. Although the results are not definitive proof that the particle exists, they still provide strong verification of Higgs’s work and represent one step closer to the development of the unified theory that has so far been elusive.

Higgs’s work has garnered him numerous awards of recognition from his peers and the scientific community, including the Saltire Society & Royal Bank of Scotland Scottish Science Award (1990), the Royal Society of Edinburgh James Scott Prize Lectureship (1993), the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics (1997), and the Stockholm Academy of Sciences Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture and Medal (2009). He has received honorary degrees from the Universities of Bristol (1997), Edinburgh (1998), Glasgow (2002), Swansea (2008), Kings College London (2009), University College London (2010) and Cambridge (2012).

Impact

Philosophers and scientists have sought an explanation for the existence of the physical world, and of the universe in general, for thousands of years. Ancient Greek philosophers, from whom we get the concept of atoms, tried to perceive the physical world as being constructed from properties within an all-pervasive “ether.” Alchemists, natural philosophers, and mystics since that time have also tried to explain the universe in a similar way. Their works and studies eventually produced the modern atomic theory based on the principles of quantum mechanics developed by Paul Dirac, Albert Einstein, and many other physicists. At the heart of this ongoing effort is the desire for a unified “theory of everything” that describes the essence of matter. The major stumbling block for such a theory has been in identifying the fundamental relationship between matter, mass, and energy. Higgs’s work has provided a viable means of defining and identifying that relationship, with the Higgs field (which gives rise to the Higgs boson) perhaps fulfilling the role of the “universal ether,” and the Higgs boson providing the means whereby energy becomes mass and matter. Higgs’s work holds the promise of revolutionizing the science of physics with the development of a complete unified theory.

Further Reading

1 

Close, Frank. The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe. New York: Basic, 2011. Print. An account that does not rely on mathematics to give the reader an appreciation of the intricacies of quantum field theory and its development to the present day.

2 

Martin, Victoria. “A Layperson’s Guide to the Higgs Boson.” Peter Higgs and the Higgs Boson. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, 2 July 2012. Web. 24 July 2012.

3 

Sample, Ian. Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science. New York: Basic, 2010. Print. Presents the history of the search for the Higgs boson in a highly readable format that describes the development of Higgs’s theories in the context of the history of subatomic and elementary particle physics.

4 

Tully, Christopher G. Elementary Particle Physics in a Nutshell. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2011. Print. Explains the concepts of elementary particle physics and Higgs interactions in an understandable way, but requires familiarity with the mathematics of quantum mechanics.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Renneboog, Richard M. "Peter Higgs." Great Lives from History: Scientists and Science, edited by Joseph L. Spradley, Salem Press, 2012. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLSS_0164.
APA 7th
Renneboog, R. M. (2012). Peter Higgs. In J. L. Spradley (Ed.), Great Lives from History: Scientists and Science. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Renneboog, Richard M. "Peter Higgs." Edited by Joseph L. Spradley. Great Lives from History: Scientists and Science. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2012. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.