Professor Peter Higgs FRS

Professor Peter Higgs has passed away at the age of 94. He is renowned for his prediction of the existence of a new sub-atomic particle, the so called Higgs boson, in 1964. The particle was eventually discovered by researchers working at CERN in 2012 and sparked a new wave of research into high energy physics. 

Paying tribute to Professor Peter Higgs the President of the Royal Society, Adrian Smith, said: “Peter Higgs’ work helped shape our fundamental understanding of the world around us. The search for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN captured the public imagination in a spectacular way. It is fitting that his name will live on in the particle that has become part of the public consciousness.”  

Professor Peter Higgs was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1983. He was awarded the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, the world’s oldest scientific prize, in 2015 and the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013. He shared the Nobel Prize with François Englert.