Elusive
How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass
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"On July 4, 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN gathered to make a momentous announcement: after nearly a half century of speculation and work, the Higgs boson had been found, and the mystery of mass solved. Not far offstage was the man for whom the particle had been named: Peter Higgs. The Higgs boson is an anomaly. No other basic particle of physics is named after a person. And in a point of almost supreme irony, it is named after a man whom most physicists would call one of the most retiring people ever to join the field-indeed, on the day the Nobel committee called him to...
"On July 4, 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN gathered to make a momentous announcement: after nearly a half century of speculation and work, the Higgs boson had been found, and the mystery of mass solved. Not far offstage was the man for whom the particle had been named: Peter Higgs. The Higgs boson is an anomaly. No other basic particle of physics is named after a person. And in a point of almost supreme irony, it is named after a man whom most physicists would call one of the most retiring people ever to join the field-indeed, on the day the Nobel committee called him to tell him he had won, Higgs had fled to a fish-and-chip shop by the sea, and ended up learning of his prize from a stranger who, recognizing him, stopped him the street to tell him the news. Or at least that's one way to tell the story. In Elusive, physicist and historian Frank Close tells for the first time ever the story of Peter Higgs' life and work. It is, as the title suggests, hard to pin down. How did Higgs become so famous, when he only published eight scientific papers in his entire life-especially when, as he himself admits, he no longer could keep up with the mathematics driving his field? It turns out it has as much to do with the machinations of scientific competition between the European Union and the United States as it does with Higgs' own insight. The truth is obscured as well by jockeying within physics, as scientists as famous as Stephen Hawking sought to use the hunt for the Higgs to enhance their own fame. And then there is the work itself, obscure and strange and yet somehow the key not just to mass, but to the entire edifice of particle physics. Frank Close clarifies them all, making the physics clear, but even more crucially, revealing just how important a single man's life can be to understanding the social and cultural roles of science in our world. A landmark event, Elusive will sit proudly beside great biographies of Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and Paul Dirac as portraits of a man and his work. But perhaps more importantly, it will help all of us understand-in a world where we all rely on "Big Science" for our material well-being-whether its functioning is truly as straightforward or distinterested as it seems. The answer to that question remains, well, elusive"--
