World’s oldest scientific prize awarded to Peter Higgs
20 Jul 2015 by Evoluted New Media
The Royal Society’s Copley Medal – the world’s oldest scientific prize – has been awarded to Professor Peter Higgs for his contribution to particle physics.
Professor Higgs received the award for his work on particles explaining the origin of mass in elementary particles, confirmed by the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Professor Higgs said: “It is an honour to be the recipient this year of the Copley Medal, the Royal Society’s premier award.”
In 1964, Professor Higgs proposed his theory about the existence of a particle that explains why other particles have mass. At the same time, yet separately, Professor François Englert and Professor Robert Brout proposed the same theory. The existence of the particle later called the Higgs boson was confirmed by two experiments carried out at the LHC in 2012. In 2013, Professor Higgs and Professor Englert jointly received a Nobel Prize in Physics.
“Peter Higgs is a most deserving winner of the Copley Medal. I congratulate him. His work, alongside that of Francois Englert, has helped shape our fundamental understanding of the world around us. The search for the Higgs boson completely ignited the public’s imagination, hopefully inspiring the next generation of scientists. The Copley Medal is the highest honour the Royal Society can give a scientist and Peter Higgs joins the ranks of the world’s greatest ever scientists,” said Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society.
