Peter Higgs (1988)

British theoretical physicist Professor Peter Higgs (b. 1929). In 1964, Higgs predicted the existence of a new type of fundamental particle, commonly called the Higgs boson. This particle is required by many of the current Grand Unified Theories (or GUTs) which hope to explain three of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism, the weak and the strong nuclear forces) in a single unified theory. Higgs is professor of theoretical physics at Edinburgh University. This photograph was taken at his office in Edinburgh in 1988 and is composited with a simulated 'Higgs Event' such as might be seen in the CMS detector of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory). The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson was announced by scientists at CERN on the 4th July 2012. Further analysis will be needed to confirm the results. Higgs, along with Francois Englert, was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the Higgs field. (Photo by Science Photo Library/AFLO)