Higgs Boson Discovery Snags Nobel Prize in Physics

Higgs Boson Particle Simulation — Simulation of a particle collision in which a Higgs boson is produced.

(Image credit: Lucas Taylor/CMS)

The Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to two physicists who predicted the existence of the elusive Higgs boson particle, which is thought to explain why other particles have mass, the committee announced today (Oct. 8).

Early forecasts had suggested the Nobel in Physics would go to Peter Higgs, of the United Kingdom, and François Englert, of Belgium, two of the scientists who predicted the existence of the Higgs boson nearly 50 years ago. And indeed after a short delay, the committee awarded the prize jointly to Higgs and Englert "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider," according to a statement on the Nobel Prize website. [Top 5 Implications of the Higgs Boson Discovery]

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The Higgs boson was the last undiscovered piece of the reigning theory of particle physics called the Standard Model. And Englert and Higgs independently published research on the process by which particles get their mass, called the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. They proposed the existence of the so-called Higgs field, an energy field that pervades space and is thought to imbue particles with mass, along with the theory of particle masses. Englert carried out his research with now-deceased Robert Brout; the Nobel Prize committee's rules dictate the science prizes can't be awarded posthumously.

Jeanna Bryner is managing editor of Scientific American. Previously she was editor in chief of Live Science and, prior to that, an editor at Scholastic's Science World magazine. Bryner has an English degree from Salisbury University, a master's degree in biogeochemistry and environmental sciences from the University of Maryland and a graduate science journalism degree from New York University. She has worked as a biologist in Florida, where she monitored wetlands and did field surveys for endangered species, including the gorgeous Florida Scrub Jay. She also received an ocean sciences journalism fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She is a firm believer that science is for everyone and that just about everything can be viewed through the lens of science.