Nobel laureate Peter Higgs proves as elusive as Higgs boson
October 09, 2013  03:29

The media spotlight has often been too harsh for Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh physicist, who disappeared off on holiday without a mobile phone this week to escape the inevitable rush of journalists that bears down on every winner of a Nobel prize.

 

The move was carefully calculated and profoundly successful. The Royal Swedish Academy made calls to the scientist's phone but failed to make contact before '" or after '" announcing the winners of the 2013 prize in physics on Tuesday morning.

 

"He didn't tell even me," said Alan Walker, a close friend and fellow physicist at Edinburgh University, who was among a crowd of scientists who celebrated at the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics after watching the announcement from Stockholm online. "He's not available, and good for him." Higgs, 84, shares the 8m Swedish kronor (775,000) prize '" and no small measure of kudos '" with the Belgian theorist, Franois Englert.

 

Higgs had been favourite to win the award since researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva declared last July that they had discovered the particle he predicted, the elusive Higgs boson.

 

Read the full report on The Guardian

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