Peter Higgs
Peter Higgs
Peter Ware Higgs CH FRS FRSEis a British theoretical physicist, emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh, and Nobel Prize laureate for his work on the mass of subatomic particles...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth29 May 1929
time
After I retired, it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it.
arrange edinburgh home life
Edinburgh is my adopted home. It's a place where I wanted to come and live, and I managed to arrange my life so it happened.
outside regard television
I don't regard television as the outside world. I regard it as an artefact.
gave might people press previous produce
The first interview I gave to the press was in 1987 when some people thought a previous machine at Cern, called LEP, might have enough energy to produce the particle.
came competent good honestly people point realise
The point came when people were doing things I didn't feel competent to do myself. I'm not being modest; I honestly get lost. I was lucky in spotting what I did when I did, but there comes a point where you realise what you're doing is not going to be much good.
want eccentric cranky
Nobody else took what I was doing seriously, so nobody would want to work with me. I was thought to be a bit eccentric and maybe cranky.
glasses light water
The model I came up with in 1964 is just the invention of a rather strange sort of medium that looks the same in all directions and produces a kind of refraction that is a little bit more complicated than that of light in glass or water.
looks fields vacuums
When you look at a vacuum in a quantum theory of fields, it isn't exactly nothing.
summer useless
This summer I have discovered something totally useless.
growing-up different mythology
There is a sort of mythology that grows up about what happened, which is different from what really did happen.
scotland europe want
If the U.K. were threatening to withdraw from Europe, I would certainly want Scotland to be out of that.
exercise assessment giving
I was an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises. A message would go round the department: 'Please give a list of your recent publications.' And I would send back a statement: 'None.'
statements
I would send back a statement: ‘None.’
jobs thinking editors
That name was a kind of joke, and not a very good one. An author, Leon Lederman, wanted to call it 'that goddamn particle' because it was clear it was going to be a tough job finding it experimentally. His editor wouldn't have that, and he said 'okay, call it the God particle', and the editor accepted it. I don't think he should've have done, because it's so misleading.