Peter Higgs

Peter Ware Higgs (born May 29, 1929), FRSE, FRS, until recently held a personal chair in theoretical physics at the University of Edinburgh and is now an emeritus professor.

Higgs is best known for his 1960's proposal of broken symmetry in electroweak theory, explaining the origin of mass of elementary particles in general and of the W and Z bosons in particular. This so-called Higgs mechanism predicts the existence of a new particle, the Higgs boson. Although this particle has not turned up in accelerator experiments so far, the Higgs mechanism is generally accepted as an important ingredient in Standard Model of particle physics.

Peter Higgs has been awarded a number of prizes in recognition of his work, most recently the Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for outstanding contributions to theoretical physics from the Institute of Physics and the 1997 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize by the European Physical Society.