The University of Edinburgh revealed on Tuesday that British physicist Peter Higgs, 94, had passed away. He was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his idea of a mass-giving particle, known as the Higgs boson. “He passed away peacefully at home on Monday 8 April following a short illness,” the Scottish university, where he had been a professor for nearly five decades, said in a statement. It called him “a great teacher and mentor, inspiring generations of young scientists”. “His family has asked that the media and public respect their privacy at this time,” the university added. Higgs solved one of physics’s biggest mysteries by using revolutionary theoretical work to help explain why the universe has mass, earning him a spot in textbooks alongside Albert Einstein and Max Planck.
Together with Belgian physicist Francois Englert, he was awarded the 2013 Physics Nobel Prize for their 1964 theory of a mass-giving particle that came to be known as the Higgs boson or the “God particle”.
The prize came following tests conducted the year before at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) using the Large Hadron Collider, which ultimately verified the theory almost fifty years after it was first proposed. “Peter Higgs was a remarkable individual — a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us,” said Peter Mathieson, Vice Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh. “His pioneering work has motivated thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”
