In praise of Peter Higgs
The particle named after him became a selling point. For the man, it was a bit of a pain
If it had been up to Peter Higgs, the world would have taken no heed of his death on April 8th—nor, for that matter, of the 94 years of life which preceded it. He valued the respect of his colleagues and treasured his occasional “bright ideas” about the way the universe worked. The fact that one of those bright ideas ended up boiled down into an object bearing his name, which became the subject of a world-encompassing multi-billion-dollar “quest”, was a source of some exasperation. The Higgs boson’s discovery, he said, “ruined my life”.
This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline “What’s in a name”
From the April 13th 2024 edition
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