Peter Higgs (1929-2024)

I was so sad to read yesterday that Peter Higgs had passed away. It's not like he and I hung out or anything, but the work he did was impressive beyond impressive. Plus, he was a professor in Edinburgh, a city I love. I know—personal connections with someone I never met. I get it. But that commercial with the programmer being viewed as a rock star, makes total sense to me.

However, it was Professor Higgs who speculated, in 1964, that there was such a thing as a boson, aka the God particle. Yes, he theorized the existence of a subatomic particle. I picture him doing the math on a cocktail napkin in a series of elegant and somewhat incomprehensible equations with little diagrams while he was on a business trip. Or, perhaps he did the math on a series of those blackboards that pull across a classroom wall. Or, on blackboards scattered around a garage, a la Charlie Epps. Either way, he thought it up. As a writer, I have profound respect for those who think up amazing characters like Lisbeth Salander. That Professor Higgs thought up an actual existing particle takes my respect a few levels more.

And then, having theorized the existence of this particle, he had no way to prove it until it was announced on July 4, 2012, that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had detected the Higgs boson. It wasn't a great moment for Higgs alone; the existence of this particle put the last piece of the Standard Model of particle physics in place. I imagine the excitement felt about this in the physics world was akin to the excitement of the first man stepping onto the Moon or the moment NASA scientists realized the Apollo 13 astronauts would survive.

Peter Higgs, CH FRS FRSE HonFinstP and Nabel laureate in Physics, could have been so full of himself as to be insufferable, but among those who knew him, the general sense was that he was interested in what others had to say, patient and sweet, and not at all in love with the term "God particle."

As for me? My favorite image of Professor Higgs is the one above. He's standing at the LHC and looking slightly uncomfortable yet proud. What a remarkable man.