41 Facts About Peter Higgs

Peter Ware Higgs was a British theoretical physicist, professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel laureate in Physics for his work on the mass of subatomic particles.

In 1964, Higgs was the single author of one of the three milestone papers published in Physical Review Letters that proposed that spontaneous symmetry breaking in electroweak theory could explain the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular.

The Peter Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which certain particles would have no mass.

Peter Higgs was born in the Elswick district of Newcastle upon Tyne, England, to Thomas Ware Peter Higgs and his wife Gertrude Maude nee Coghill.

Peter Higgs's father worked as a sound engineer for the BBC, and as a result of childhood asthma, together with the family moving around because of his father's job and later World War II, Higgs missed some early schooling and was taught at home.

When his father relocated to Bedford, Peter Higgs stayed behind in Bristol with his mother, and was largely raised there.

Peter Higgs attended Cotham Grammar School in Bristol from 1941 to 1946, where he was inspired by the work of one of the school's alumni, Paul Dirac, a founder of the field of quantum mechanics.

In 1946, at the age of 17, Peter Higgs moved to City of London School, where he specialised in mathematics, then in 1947 to King's College London, where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in physics in 1950 and achieved a master's degree in 1952.

Peter Higgs was awarded an 1851 Research Fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and performed his doctoral research in molecular physics under the supervision of Charles Coulson and Christopher Longuet-Higgins.

Peter Higgs was awarded a PhD degree in 1954 with a thesis entitled Some problems in the theory of molecular vibrations from the university.

Peter Higgs then held various posts at Imperial College London, and University College London.

Peter Higgs returned to the University of Edinburgh in 1960 to take up the post of Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics, allowing him to settle in the city he had enjoyed while hitchhiking to the Western Highlands as a student in 1949.

Peter Higgs was promoted to Reader, became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1974 and was promoted to a personal chair of Theoretical Physics in 1980.

Peter Higgs was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983 and Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1991.

Peter Higgs was awarded the Rutherford Medal and Prize in 1984.

Peter Higgs received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol in 1997.

Peter Higgs postulated that this field permeates space, giving mass to all elementary subatomic particles interacting with it.

The original basis of Peter Higgs's work came from the Japanese-born theorist and Nobel Prize laureate Yoichiro Nambu from the University of Chicago.

Peter Higgs reportedly developed the fundamentals of his theory after returning to his Edinburgh New Town apartment from a failed weekend camping trip to the Highlands.

Peter Higgs stated that there was no "eureka moment" in the development of the theory.

Peter Higgs wrote a short paper exploiting a loophole in Goldstone's theorem and published it in Physics Letters, a European physics journal edited at CERN, in Switzerland, in 1964.

Peter Higgs wrote a second paper describing a theoretical model, but the paper was rejected.

Peter Higgs wrote an extra paragraph and sent his paper to Physical Review Letters, another leading physics journal, which published it later in 1964.

Peter Higgs was the recipient of the Edinburgh Award for 2011.

Peter Higgs was the fifth person to receive the Award, which was established in 2007 by the City of Edinburgh Council to honour an outstanding individual who has made a positive impact on the city and gained national and international recognition for Edinburgh.

Peter Higgs was presented with an engraved loving cup by the Rt Hon George Grubb, Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in a ceremony held at the City Chambers on Friday, 24 February 2012.

Peter Higgs was awarded the Freedom of the City of Bristol in July 2013.

Peter Higgs was honoured with a brass plaque installed on the Newcastle Quayside as part of the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative Local Heroes Walk of Fame.

Peter Higgs admitted he had gone out to avoid the media attention so he was informed he had been awarded the prize by an ex-neighbour on his way home, since he did not have a mobile phone.

Peter Higgs turned down a knighthood in 1999, but in 2012, he accepted membership of the Order of the Companions of Honour.

Peter Higgs later said that he only accepted the order because he was wrongly assured that the award was in the gift of the Queen alone.

Peter Higgs expressed cynicism towards the honours system, and the way the system "is used for political purposes by the government in power".

Peter Higgs married Jody Williamson, an American lecturer in linguistics at Edinburgh and a fellow activist with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, in 1963.

Peter Higgs had two sons: Christopher and Jonny, a jazz musician.

Peter Higgs had two grandchildren: Jo, a writer, and Bonnie, a musician.

Peter Higgs was an activist in the CND while in London and later in Edinburgh but resigned his membership when the group extended its remit from campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power, too.

Peter Higgs was a Greenpeace member until the group opposed genetically modified organisms.

Peter Higgs was awarded the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics but declined to attend the awards ceremony in Jerusalem in protest of Israel's treatment of Palestinians.

Peter Higgs was actively involved in the Edinburgh University branch of the Association of University Teachers, through which he agitated for greater staff involvement in the management of the physics department.

Peter Higgs described Richard Dawkins as having adopted a "fundamentalist" view of non-atheists.

Peter Higgs died after a short illness at home in Edinburgh on 8 April 2024, aged 94.