Professor Peter Higgs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013, has left his medal to the University of Edinburgh following his death in April 2024.
The medal will be homed at the university’s Centre for Research Collections, while being displayed at events and exhibitions, including at an upcoming lecture about Higgs this year.
Higgs became a lecturer at Edinburgh in 1960, where he realised his theory which became known as the Higgs boson, referring to a particle that gives other particles their mass.
Professor Neil Turok, the Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh, explained the significance of his discovery on BBC Good Morning Scotland: “Before Peter Higgs, we thought of the vacuum as being empty and what he discovered is that actually the vacuum is full of stuff.”
Despite Professor Higgs and his colleagues theorising its existence 50 years before, the confirmation of the Higgs boson was finally made in July 2012, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland—the most powerful particle accelerator in the world.
The LHC was able to confirm the existence of Higgs’ field and Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics the following year for his successful theory.
His discovery is now integral to the standard model of particle physics we have today.
Professor Neil Turok said in response to this honour: “It is fitting that Peter Higgs’ Nobel Prize medal is now preserved at Edinburgh, forming a lasting part of the university’s scientific heritage.”
On working with Peter Higgs, Professor Turok commented: “He was a very unusual person and is very warmly remembered in the physics department.”
“Peter higgs chalkboard” by Hans G is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.