On 4 July 2012, one of the longest-running mysteries in physics was finally clarified. The ATLAS and CMS collaborations at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced that they had produced and observed the elusive Higgs boson. This unstable elementary particle was theorised back in 1964 by 6 scientists – one of them was the particle’s namesake, Peter Higgs.

In this episode, physicist and former Ri Christmas Lecturer, Frank Close, explores the life of Peter Higgs, a Nobel prize-winning scientist and the only person in history to have an existing single particle named after them.

Get Frank Close's book 'Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass': https://geni.us/KI6As1C
Watch Frank Close's CHRISTMAS LECTURES: rigb.org/explore-science/explore/video/cosmic-onion-atoms-1993

This talk was recorded from our theatre at the Royal Institution on 7 July 2022.

Please leave this episode a rating and a review to let us know what you think, and to help more people discover the podcast.

Get tickets for upcoming talks and livestreams: rigb.org/whats-on
YouTube: youtube.com/TheRoyalInstitution
Twitter: twitter.com/Ri_Science
Patreon: patreon.com/TheRoyalInstitution

Produced by: Sarah Dick

Music by: Joseph Sandy

Thumbnail image credit: Garik Barseghyan via Pixabay

How Peter Higgs proposed the Higgs boson – with Frank Close