I was incredibly fortunate to meet him at CERN the day before the Higgs boson announcement. As an intern, I encountered him the evening prior; he was dining alone in the CERN cafeteria, blending in like a kindly elderly gentleman. He was exceptionally humble and courteous. I feel so lucky that I mustered the courage to speak with him and shake his hand. Rest in peace, Mr. Higgs.
The story of how Higgs predicted his mechanism was part of what got me into physics as a kid. It fit 10 year old me's obsession with the 'soft-spoken genius' archetype perfectly and formed a pillar in my belief that 'genius' was made through hard work (and some amount of luck) rather than being born with it.<p>The announcement of the detection at the LHC is a core memory of mine, I still distinctly remember where I was, what I was doing and very excitedly trying to explain how cool it was to my parents at the time.
Lame claim to fame: Higgs was the PhD supervisor of one of my university professors. He told us that Higgs left a message on his desk before going hiking one weekend to the effect that he'd had a great idea and would tell them all about it when he got back.
It was a success for particle physics that they found the Higgs, but it was also a tragedy. Discovering the Higgs and nothing else new was the nightmare scenario for the LHC, and so it has come to pass.
Sad to hear, I remember the excitement over the experimental evidence once his particle was detected. I'm always amazed by theoretical predictions that can actually be verified plus it was interrsting to hear about the higgs boson as part of my studies shortly after it was detected. Nowadays it seems many theoretical predications are not even close to being verifiable in the coming years or with the current and planned tech. Unless we are talking about superconductivity at room temperature ofc
I read "Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass" by Frank Close and I found it an excellent read on the elusive Higgs Particle and the elusive Peter Higgs himself (Higgs went for a walk to hide from people on the day the Nobel Prize was announced).
This has given me a case of the Higgs boson blues<p><a href="https://youtu.be/1GWsdqCYvgw" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/1GWsdqCYvgw</a>
BBC version <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68774195" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68774195</a>
RIP.<p>Lucky who is born in an English-speaking country with a short name easy to remember by other English monolinguals. The "Higgs boson" has many fathers, but his name got attached to the concept for simplicity, giving him world fame and, ultimately, a Nobel prize when he likely didn't contribute significantly more than others, cf. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#History" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#History</a> or <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Physics" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies#Ph...</a>
Just keep in mind that if this way present day, the Sabine hosenfelds of the world would be saying iTs NoT eVeN tEsTaBlE, and HN would be cheering her for fighting the evil corrupted mainstream academia.