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Peter Higgs , the theoretical physicist who predicted the existence of theHiggs boson , has pass at the age of 94 .
The University of Edinburgh confirmed theNobel Prize - succeed physicist ’s April 8 dying follow a light sickness in astatementreleased Tuesday ( April 9 ) . Higgs was a professor emeritus at the university , where he sour beginning in 1960 until his retirement in 1996 .
Professor Peter Higgs stands in front of a photograph of the Large Hadron Collider at the Science Museum’s ‘Collider’ exhibition on November 12, 2013 in London, England. He died on April 8, 2024, at the age of 94.
Related : What is the Higgs boson ?
Higgs was born in Newcastle upon Tyne , England , on May 29 , 1929 . He earned his doctorial degree from King ’s College London in 1954 . A bedeviling question inphysicsat the time was how elementary particles such as the electron and quark cheese have raft . In a 1964 newspaper publisher , Higgs posited that these molecule gain their mass through an interaction with a field , now known as a Higgs field , and that this Higgs field should give rising slope to a noticeable molecule , the Higgs boson .
— The Higgs boson could have keep our universe of discourse from collapsing
— Physicists discover never - before - seen particle sitting on a tabletop
— Scientists find first evidence of rare Higgs boson decay
in reality detecting the Higgs boson was a massive challenge , however , because these particles are vanishingly rare and decay within fraction of a irregular . It take decennary of effort to finally detect the Higgs boson , in the end proving Higgs ' hypothesis correct . The corpuscle is 130 times more massive than a proton , but it has no bang and no tailspin ( or angular momentum ) . Without it , no other subatomic particle would have mass .
Higgs reacted to the tidings of the Higgs boson discovery by welling up — an emotional response he afterwards explained to science author Ian Sample . " I was knocked over by the moving ridge of the chemical reaction of the audience , " Sample quoted Higgs as say in a2013 clause . " Up until then I was holding back emotionally , " Higgs added , " but when the audience oppose , I could n’t hold back any more . "
