Higgs-boson discoverer & Nobel laureate Peter Higgs dies at age of 94

Utkarsh Classes Last Updated 17-04-2024

Death 6 min read

British physicist Peter Higgs died at the age of 94. Peter Higgs gained fame for the discovery of 'Higgs-Boson Particle' i.e. 'God Particle'.

Peter Higgs received Nobel Prize for the discovery of 'God Particle':

Under ‘God Particle’ it was helped to explain how the universe was created after the Big Bang.
Peter Higgs showed how bosons hold the universe together. Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013 for this discovery.

Giving information about his death, Edinburgh University said that Peter breathed his last at his home on 8 April after illness. He had been a professor in this university for many years. Peter Higgs was a professor at Edinburgh University for many years.

In the 1960s, Higgs and other physicists tried to understand what the universe was made of. In this effort, he tried to find the answer to the basic question of physics.
In the year 2012, scientists obtained information on it, it was named Higgs Boson. On July 4, 2012, the existence of the Higgs boson particle was announced as confirmed. The Higgs boson or God particle was a concept of science till 2012.

Peter Higgs was born in Newcastle in 1929. Peter Higgs's father was a sound engineer at the BBC. While Higgs' family lived in Bristol, Higgs proved himself to be a very bright student at Cotham Grammar School.
After schooling, Higgs studied physics at King's College, London. At that time he chose a new option of physics, theoretical physics.

In 1997 he was awarded the Dirac Medal for his outstanding contributions to the field of theoretical physics. In the same year, the European Physics Committee honored him for high energy and particle energy. In 2004, the Wolff Foundation awarded Higgs the Wolff Prize in Physics.

India has also contributed to the discovery of the 'God Particle'. 'Higgs' of 'Higgs Boson' is named after British physicist Peter Higgs. Whereas, 'Boson' is named after Indian scientist Satyendra Nath Bose.
At the same time, in an article in the New York Times of July 2012, Satyendra Nath Bose was described as 'Father of God Particle'.

Satyendra Nath Bose, born in Calcutta on January 1, 1874, did remarkable work in quantum mechanics and mathematical physics.
Bose wrote a research paper on quantum statistics and sent it to a British journal for publication but it could not be published.
Bose wrote a letter to Albert Einstein in 1924 and sent his research paper to him. Understanding the importance of Bose's work, Einstein got it published in a German journal. It was in this journal that the word boson was used for the first time.
Einstein himself named the discovery of Satyendra Nath Bose as 'Boson'.
Satyendra Nath Bose was awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian honour.

The particles get mass from the Higgs boson. This seems quite normal, but if the particles had no mass, stars could not have formed. There would be no galaxies and no atoms. The universe would have been different.
Weight or mass is something that can hold anything inside itself. If nothing happens, the atoms of something will keep rotating inside it and will not connect. According to this theory, there is a field in every empty space which was named the Higgs field. This field contains particles which were called the Higgs boson. When particles gain weight, they come together.