2024-04-10 17:57:34
Par Tristan Vey
Published yesterday at 7:43 p.m., Updated yesterday at 7:57 p.m.
“My style is to work in isolation and sometimes have a bright idea,” explained Peter Higgs. IAN MACNICOL / AFP
Died at the age of 94, the British physicist Peter Higgs theorized in the early 1960s the mechanism by which particles acquire their mass and predicted the existence of a particle, discovered in 2012, linked to this phenomenon.
Even if you’re not interested in physics, the term “Higgs boson” is probably not foreign to you. Without knowing what exactly a boson is (it doesn’t matter) or who Peter Higgs was (we’ll introduce him to you), the name of this particle must resonate something in you. The announcement of its discovery by CERN in 2012 went around the world and made the front pages of all the newspapers.
Thousands of researchers had been actively tracking this particle for almost fifty years, for which billions had been invested. It was then THE missing brick of the standard model of physics, which describes the functioning of all particles and their interactions. If we are talking about it today, it is because the English physicist Peter Higgs, who spent most of his career at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland, died on Monday following a « short illness » at the age of 94.
A physicist who fled posterity
The man was as elusive as his particle…
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