Higgs was born[16] in theElswick district ofNewcastle upon Tyne, England, to Thomas Ware Higgs (1898–1962) and his wife[17] Gertrude Maude née Coghill (1895–1969).[18][19][20] His father worked as a sound engineer for the BBC, and as a result of childhood asthma, together with the family moving around because of his father's job and laterWorld War II, Higgs missed some early schooling and was taught at home.[21] When his father relocated toBedford, Higgs stayed behind inBristol with his mother, and was largely raised there. He attendedCotham Grammar School in Bristol from 1941 to 1946,[18][22] where he was inspired by the work of one of the school'salumni,Paul Dirac, a founder of the field ofquantum mechanics.[19]
At Edinburgh, Higgs first became interested inmass, developing the idea that particles – massless when the universe began – acquired mass a fraction of a second later as a result of interacting with a theoretical field (which became known as theHiggs field). Higgs postulated that this field permeates space, giving mass to all elementary subatomic particles interacting with it.[19][29]
TheHiggs mechanism postulates the existence of the Higgs field, which confers mass on quarks and leptons;[30] this causes only a tiny portion of the masses of other subatomic particles, such as protons and neutrons. In these, gluons that bind quarks together confer most of the particle mass. The original basis of Higgs's work came from the Japanese-born theorist and Nobel Prize laureateYoichiro Nambu from theUniversity of Chicago. Nambu had proposed a theory known asspontaneous symmetry breaking based on what was known to happen insuperconductivity in condensed matter, which incorrectly predicted massless particles (theGoldstone's theorem).[7]
Higgs reportedly developed the fundamentals of his theory after returning to his EdinburghNew Town apartment from a failed weekend camping trip to the Highlands.[31][32][33] He stated that there was no "eureka moment" in the development of the theory.[34] He wrote a short paper exploiting a loophole in Goldstone's theorem (massless Goldstone particles need not occur when local symmetry is spontaneously broken in a relativistic theory[35]) and published it inPhysics Letters, a European physics journal edited atCERN, in Switzerland, in 1964.[36]
Higgs wrote a second paper describing a theoretical model (theHiggs mechanism), but the paper was rejected (the editors ofPhysics Letters judged it "of no obvious relevance to physics").[19] Higgs wrote an extra paragraph and sent his paper toPhysical Review Letters, another leading physics journal, which published it later in 1964. This paper predicted a new massive spin-zero boson (later named theHiggs boson).[35][37]Other physicists,Robert Brout andFrançois Englert[38] andGerald Guralnik,C. R. Hagen andTom Kibble[39]had reached similar conclusions at about the same time. In the published version, Higgs quotes Brout and Englert, and the third paper quotes the previous ones. The three papers written on this boson discovery by Higgs, Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Brout, and Englert were each recognised as milestone papers byPhysical Review Letters 50th-anniversary celebration.[40] While each of these famous papers took similar approaches, the contributions and differences between the1964 PRL symmetry breaking papers are noteworthy. The mechanism had been proposed in 1962 byPhilip Anderson although he did not include a crucial relativistic model.[35][41]
On 4 July 2012, CERN announced theATLAS andCompact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments had seen strong indications for the presence of a new particle, which could be the Higgs boson, in the mass region around 126 gigaelectronvolts (GeV).[42]Speaking at the seminar inGeneva, Higgs commented "It's really an incredible thing that it's happened in my lifetime."[13] Ironically, this probable confirmation of the Higgs boson was made at the same place where the editor ofPhysics Letters rejected Higgs's paper.[7]
Higgs was the recipient of the Edinburgh Award for 2011. He was the fifth person to receive the Award, which was established in 2007 by theCity of Edinburgh Council to honour an outstanding individual who has made a positive impact on the city and gained national and international recognition forEdinburgh.[45]
Higgs was presented with an engravedloving cup bythe Rt Hon George Grubb,Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in a ceremony held at the City Chambers on Friday, 24 February 2012. The event also marked the unveiling of his handprints in the City Chambers quadrangle, where they had been engraved in Caithness stone alongside those of previous Edinburgh Award recipients.[46][47][48]
Higgs was awarded the Freedom of the City ofBristol in July 2013.[49] The Dirac-Higgs Science Centre in Bristol is also named in his honour.[50] In April 2014, he was also awarded the Freedom of the City of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was also honoured with a brass plaque installed on the Newcastle Quayside as part of the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative Local Heroes Walk of Fame.[51]
On 6 July 2012,Edinburgh University announced a new centre named after Professor Higgs to support future research intheoretical physics. The Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics brings together scientists from around the world to seek "a deeper understanding of how the universe works".[52] The centre is currently based within theJames Clerk Maxwell Building, home of the university'sSchool of Physics and Astronomy and the iGEM 2015 team (ClassAfiED). The university has also established a chair of theoretical physics in the name of Peter Higgs.[53][54]
On 8 October 2013, it was announced that Higgs andFrançois Englert would share the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics "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".[55] Higgs admitted he had gone out to avoid the media attention[56] so he was informed he had been awarded the prize by an ex-neighbour on his way home, since he did not have a mobile phone.[57][58]
In November 2025, it was reported that Higgs had left hisNobel Prize medal to Edinburgh University in his will.[59]
Higgs turned down aknighthood in 1999, but in 2012, he accepted membership of theOrder of the Companions of Honour.[60][61] He later said that he only accepted the order because he was wrongly assured that the award was in the gift of the Queen alone. He also expressed cynicism towards thehonours system, and the way the system "is used for political purposes by the government in power". The order confers no title or precedence, but recipients of the order are entitled to use the post-nominal lettersCH.In the same interview he also stated that when people ask what theCH after his name stands for, he replies "it means I'm an honorary Swiss."[62] He received the order from the Queen at an investiture atHolyrood House on 1 July 2014.[63]
Higgs married Jody Williamson, an American lecturer in linguistics at Edinburgh and a fellow activist with theCampaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND),[69] in 1963. Their first son was born in August 1965.[70] Higgs had two sons: Christopher and Jonny, a jazz musician.[71] He also had two grandchildren: Jo, a writer, and Bonnie (Kemplay), a musician.[47] Higgs and Williamson separated in 1972 but remained friends until she died in 2008.[72]
Higgs was an activist in the CND while in London and later in Edinburgh but resigned his membership when the group extended its remit from campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power, too.[19][73] He was aGreenpeace member until the group opposedgenetically modified organisms.[73] Higgs was awarded the 2004Wolf Prize in Physics (sharing it withRobert Brout andFrançois Englert) but declined to attend the awards ceremony inJerusalem in protest of Israel's treatment ofPalestinians.[74] Higgs was actively involved in the Edinburgh University branch of theAssociation of University Teachers, through which he agitated for greater staff involvement in the management of the physics department.[62]
Higgs was anatheist.[75] He describedRichard Dawkins as having adopted a "fundamentalist" view of non-atheists.[76] Higgs expressed displeasure with the nickname the "God particle".[77] Although it has been reported that he believed the term "might offend people who are religious",[71] Higgs stated that this is not the case, lamenting the letters he has received which claim the God particle was predicted in theTorah, theQur'an andBuddhist scriptures. In a 2013 interview withDecca Aitkenhead, Higgs was quoted as saying:[78]
I'm not a believer. Some people get confused between the science and the theology. They claim that what happened atCERN proves the existence of God. The church in Spain has also been guilty of using that name as evidence for what they want to prove. [It] reinforces confused thinking in the heads of people who are already thinking in a confused way. If they believe that story about creation in seven days, are they being intelligent?
^Baggot, Jim (2012).Higgs The invention and discovery of the 'God Particle' (First ed.). Fountaindale Public Library: Oxford University Press. pp. 90–91.ISBN978-0-19-960349-7.
^Rodgers, Peter (1 September 2004)."The heart of the matter".The Independent. London.Archived from the original on 16 December 2013. Retrieved16 May 2011.
^Sample, Ian (17 November 2007)."The god of small things".The Guardian. London.Archived from the original on 1 October 2013. Retrieved21 March 2013.The name has stuck, but makes Higgs wince and raises the hackles of other theorists. "I wish he hadn't done it," he says. "I have to explain to people it was a joke. I'm an atheist, but I have an uneasy feeling that playing around with names like that could be unnecessarily offensive to people who are religious."
^Randerson, James (30 June 2008)."Father of the 'God Particle'".The Guardian. London.Archived from the original on 1 December 2016. Retrieved16 December 2016.
.jpg)
