The visit was kept secret. So when scientists and technicians working in the
vast research tunnel buried deep underground in Geneva saw an elderly man
with a shock of white hair and large, thick spectacles being led on a guided
tour, they thought little of it. Only later, when a rumour began to sweep
round the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) facility did
they realise his significance. Peter Higgs, now 79 but still sprightly, is
the reason they are working on what is the largest, most expensive physics
experiment ever conceived.
By the time Higgs reached the canteen during his visit last April, the word
was out about his presence. Professors with PhDs and a lifetime’s work in
particle physics, hard-bitten laboratory technicians, and fresh-faced recent
graduates clamoured round him. Some sought his autograph, others just wanted
to meet him, to be in his company. A shy, modest man, he found the attention
overwhelming. Not for the first time in his life, he might have reflected on
how one idea he had 44 years ago, one moment of grasped insight, has come to
define him.
He signed his name, he spoke politely and respectfully to individuals and the
crowd, and although deeply unassuming, he even agreed to a brief, and small,
press conference at the end of his stay. Then he returned to his flat in
Edinburgh, the place he has called home since he started working at the
city’s university in his thirties, where he strives to keep the fuss around
him at arm’s length. He understands, though, that in the next 12 months it
will become increasingly difficult to evade the commotion.
In the summer of 1964, Higgs found himself pondering a problem in the field of
particle physics that was proving obstinate: while objects, like a brick,
say, have mass that comes from the atoms that make it up, the constituents
of the atom are weightless. The puzzle of where mass comes from was
recognised, but not one of the pressing issues of the day, yet Higgs came up
with an elegant theory that filled this gap of knowledge.
He proposed that a force field exists that all particles must pass through.
Some are slowed down more than others by the field, making them heavier.
Expanding this theory, he proposed that a particle exists, which he called a
scalar boson, which clings to other particles as they pass through the
field, so conveying mass upon them. His theory was radical and it wasn’t
until an American physicist, Steven Weinberg, referred to it — and coined
the terms Higgs mechanism, Higgs field and Higgs boson in a scientific paper
in the early 1970s, that it became widespread. Now, Higgs’s work is
considered a fundamental part of the Standard Model, the accepted theory
that for more than three decades has been used to describe the interactions
between the fundamental particles that make up the universe. The Higgs
boson, however, has never been identified, evading all attempts to discover
it. At Cern, the hope is that this final breakthrough is about to be made.
“I shall open a bottle of something,” Higgs said when asked at the press
conference what he would do if the Higgs boson is found. “It will be
champagne — whisky takes a little more time to drink.”
The experiment at Cern is vast in scope and ambition. About £3 billion has
been spent on the research, based around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC),
the largest, most powerful high-energy particle accelerator ever built, and
more than 2,000 physicists from almost 36 countries have worked on the
project. When the LHC is switched on, which is due to happen next month, two
beams of protons, each less than a hair’s breadth in diameter, will hurtle
round the 17-mile tunnel, before slamming into each other. The collision is
expected to mirror the conditions of the big bang that created the universe,
and the belief is that among the scattered debris will be the Higgs boson.
Four giant detectors — one, Atlas, is 150ft long and weighs 7,000 tons —
will conduct the search.
“All this is important because it tells us how the universe works,” explains
John Ellis, a physicist at Cern. “People have been trying to figure out how
the universe works ever since they noticed that there is a universe out
there. Without Peter’s work, we wouldn’t have theories that made any sense.
There’s no doubt in my mind that if and when the Higgs boson is discovered,
Peter will be on the first plane to Stockholm.”
The reference to the Nobel prize is commonplace. Higgs’s theory has long been
accepted, but only when it has been proven can it be recognised for the
Nobel prize. He is perhaps only half-joking when he remarks: “I have to ask
my GP to keep me alive.” Due to the precise nature of the work of the LHC,
it could take up to a year for the results to be verified. In the meantime,
Higgs will continue to treasure his quiet life.
He does not own a computer, so he does not respond to e-mails. Nor does he
answer the telephone unless he knows who is calling. Journalists trying to
arrange an interview must send a letter, and even then he will only respond
to established science correspondents whom he trusts. The reluctance is
partly for his privacy, partly because he became embroiled in a brief spat
with Stephen Hawking six years ago, after Hawking bet a colleague £100 that
the Higgs boson would never be found (they have since settled their
differences). Mostly, though, the reticence is because Higgs is so diffident
about his standing.
When asked to place him in the pantheon of theorists, Ellis pauses only
briefly before saying, “comparisons with Einstein come to mind. It would be
a little bit much to say he’s at that level, but he’s certainly at the next
level”. Higgs, though, bridles at such effusive praise.
A book by the Nobel laureate Leon Lederman was titled The God Particle in
reference to the Higgs boson, conferring further significance on Higgs’s
theory. Lederman wanted it to be called The Goddamn Particle, but his
publishers opted for God instead.
“I wish he hadn’t done that,” Higgs later said. “I have to explain to people
it was a joke. I’m an atheist, but playing around with names like that could
be unnecessarily offensive to people who are religious. I get very uneasy
when people try to attach too much importance to me. All I was doing was
bringing together things we already knew about the universe.”
Higgs was born in Newcastle in 1929 and because he suffered from asthma, and
because his father’s job as a BBC sound engineer involved much travelling
round the country, he was home-schooled for a time. After the family moved
to Bristol, Higgs attended Cotham Grammar, where he would stand during
morning assembly and look at the names of the school’s alumni. The name Paul
Dirac was listed more than any other and Higgs became gripped by the work of
a man who was the founding father of quantum mechanics. The schoolboy became
engrossed in physics and has spoken of the wonder of “understanding the
world”.
At 17, Higgs went to City of London School to do mathematics, and soon emerged
as one of the most gifted students. Yet the path to Oxford and Cambridge
seemed to him to be a kind of resignation. “Some of the family attitude to
Oxford and Cambridge rubbed off on me,” he later explained. “Those places
were all very well for the children of the idle rich, but if you were
serious about university, you went somewhere else.”
So he opted for King’s College, London, then moved to Edinburgh in his early
thirties, even although his lack of practical skills prompted teachers to
warn him that he would “never make it as a physicist”. Edinburgh had already
enchanted Higgs during childhood hiking trips.
A CND activist when he lived in London, it was at a meeting in Edinburgh that
he met Jo, an American linguist who became his wife, and it was when the
couple’s planned camping weekend in the west Highland’s was washed out by
heavy rainfall that he returned to Edinburgh and devised his groundbreaking
theory.
Higgs submitted his paper to a journal editor, who was based at Cern, but it
was rejected because it was not considered relevant. A dejected Higgs wrote
to another student, saying “This summer I have discovered something totally
useless”, but he expanded his paper and sent it to an American journal,
where it was published. A lecture tour of America followed.
Unknown to Higgs and the rest of the physics world, two Belgians,
Robert Brout and Francois Englert, had come up with the same theory, at the
same time. All three are now credited with coming up with the theory,
although it is Higgs whose name became attached to it, and all three are
expected to receive the Nobel prize if the Higgs boson is discovered.
“I have no resentment with respect to Higgs,” says Brout, 79. “I find it
amazing how perfect a gentleman he is. He has been more than fair. That it
is called the Higgs mechanism is not due to him. I admire Peter, he wrote a
beautiful paper and he’s done very nice independent work. There is no
aggravation, I’m very happy to be associated with this work; it is one of
the fine things in my life.”
Higgs tries to evade being pigeon-holed and clings to his principles. He left
CND when the group began campaigning against nuclear power, and left
Greenpeace when the group opposed genetically modified organisms.
A Dutch film crew, two years into making a documentary on the search for the
Higgs boson, eventually won his agreement to be interviewed, and despite his
reluctance they found him to be a warm, funny, engaging individual, but one
who has no need for recognition.
“He realises that more and more the press are trying to get hold of him, but
it’s not the first time in his life that there’s been this excitement,” says
Jan van den Berg, the documentary’s director. “In Cern’s previous
experiment, there was a moment when they thought they’d found the Higgs
Boson. He’s a very modest man, but he knows very well what it’s all about.”
An art lover and keen hillwalker, Higgs keeps in touch with former colleagues
at Edinburgh University, where staff at his old department have become
pseudo gatekeepers, trying to manage the interest that is building in his
life and work.
“His work has become such a focal point of the entire worldwide particle
physics activities,” says Richard Kenway, a physics professor at Edinburgh
University who worked with Higgs. “He hasn’t been allowed to forget the
significance of that experimental quest. His view of things is that
obviously it’s important that people discover the Higgs boson, but actually
that’s more about finishing off a piece of work that we think we
understand.The other things that LHC is likely to discover are vastly more
exciting for our understanding of the world.”
All the fuss is, to Higgs, immaterial. “I’m worried about the next few months
that there’s going to be an outbreak of attention,” he said recently. “It’ll
be a relief for them to find it. If I’m wrong, I’ll be rather sad.”
