Blog post: ajb: François Englert and Peter W. Higgs win the Nobel prize

François Englert and Peter W. Higgs were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 for the theory of how fundamental particles acquire mass on the 8th october. Both Englert (with the deceased Robert Brout) and Higgs independently in 1964 proposed a mechanism for the elementary particles in to acquire mass; the so called Higgs mechanism.

 

On 4th July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced they have observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This fits well with the predicted Higgs particle. However further work is needed to determine if this particle is exactly the Higgs as proposed in the standard model or something a little more exotic.

 

Peter Higgs. Photo by G-M Greuel

François Englert. Photo by Pnicolet

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Higgs talking to the BBC.

 

The standard model

Today the standard model, with the Higgs sector, is one of the key stones in our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature. The standard model describes electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces. The other key stone of fundamental physics is Einstein's general relativity which describes the gravitational force.

 

Links

The 2013 Nobel prize in physics

 

 

 

Peter Higgs-facts

 

François Englert - Facts
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