There's significantly more going on of the Higgs boson than only one man named Higgs.
Notwithstanding the allure of the "solitary virtuoso" story, it's interesting that a revelation can be credited exclusively to crafted by one researcher. From the get go, Elusive, a memoir of Peter Higgs composed by physicist and writer Frank Close, appears to play into that deceptive story: The book is captioned "How Peter Higgs settled the secret of mass."
In any case, the book rapidly — and legitimately — goes from that way as it dives into the hypothetical exciting bends in the road that started off a decades-in length mission for the molecule known as the Higgs boson, finishing with its disclosure in 2012 (SN: 7/28/12, p. 5). That recognition confirmed the instrument by which particles gain mass. Higgs, of the University of Edinburgh, assumed a critical part in laying out mass' starting points, yet he was one of numerous supporters.
The routinely unassuming and consideration disinclined Higgs presents the defense against himself as the one wonder behind the revelation, the book notes: According to Higgs, "my genuine commitment was just a key knowledge right toward the finish of the story."
The Higgs boson itself doesn't give basic particles with mass. All things being equal, its revelation affirmed the rightness of a hypothesis concocted by Higgs and others. As per that hypothesis, rudimentary particles gain mass by communicating with a field, presently known as the Higgs field, that invades all of room.
A paper from Higgs in 1964 was not quick to propose this cycle. Physicists Robert Brout and François Englert beat him to the punch, very narrowly. What's more, one more group of specialists distributed a similar thought soon after Higgs (SN: 11/2/13, p. 4). Pivotal basis had proactively been laid by yet different researchers, nevertheless others circled back to Higgs' work. Higgs, in any case, was the one to make the essential point that the mass component suggested the presence of a new, enormous molecule, which could affirm the hypothesis.Despite this complicated history, scientists slapped his name on not just the particle, the Higgs boson, but also the process behind it, traditionally called the Higgs mechanism, but more recently and accurately termed the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. (Higgs has reportedly proposed calling it the “ABEGHHK’tH mechanism,” using the first letter of the last names of the parade of physicists who contributed to it, Anderson, Brout, Englert, Guralnik, Hagen, Higgs, Kibble and ’t Hooft.) The postmortem of how Higgs’ name attained outsize importance is one of the most interesting sections of Elusive, revealing much about the scientific sausage-making process and how it sometimes goes awry. Equally fascinating is the account of how the media embraced Higgs as a titan of physics based on his association with the boson, lofting him to a level of fame that, for Higgs, felt unwelcome and unwarranted.
The book admirably tackles the complexities of the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism and how particles gain mass, covering details that are usually glossed over in most popular explanations. Close doesn’t shy away from nitty-gritty physics terms like “perturbation theory,” “renormalization” and “gauge invariance.” The thorniest bits are most appropriate for amateur physics aficionados who desire a deeper understanding, and those bits may require a reread before sinking in.
Higgs is famously not a fan of the limelight — he disappeared for several hours on the day he won a Nobel Prize for his work on mass. The physicist sometimes seems to fade into the background of this biography as well, with multiple pages passing with no appearance or contribution from Higgs. Once the scientific community got wind of the possibility of a new particle, the idea took on a life of its own, with experimental physicists leading the charge. Higgs didn’t make many contributions to the subject beyond his initial insight, which he calls “the only really original idea I’ve ever had.”
Thus, the book sometimes feels like a biography of a particle named Higgs, with the person playing a backup role. Higgs is so reserved and so private that you get the sense that Close still hasn’t quite cracked him. While interesting details of Higgs’ life and passions are revealed — for example, his fervent objection to nuclear weapons — deeper insights are missing. In the end, Higgs is, just like the particle named after him
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