
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Englert and Higgs - mattheww
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2013/
======
flexie
They say that professor Higgs is shy and not at all comfortable with the
attention and almost as hard to find as his particle.

~~~
kemiller
I'm sensing you're being facetious, but not knowing the personalities
involved, what does this mean? Is he a notorious publicity hound?

~~~
anu_gupta
Means pretty much what it says, Professor Higgs is quite uncomfortable with
publicity.

Apparently, he's on holiday right now, with no phone / email. Almost certainly
deliberately.

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sambeau
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind people of the (sometimes a little
forgotten) other person name-checked in the Higgs Boson: Satyendra Nath Bose.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose)

He was an interesting chap!

~~~
claudius
He certainly had an interesting life, but I don't think the person giving
their name to half the particles in the universe can be called ‘a little
forgotten’.

~~~
sambeau
Ha. True.

But, I'm not sure people know that a Boson is named after him at all and if
they do I'd bet they assume (like I once did) that Bose was some German or
Hungarian bloke.

(Mind you, I also thought that the Bose of Bose Corporation[1] would have been
a European rather than Indian descent, too. Clearly, I have some prejudice I
need to work out).

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Bose](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amar_Bose)

~~~
theorique
That's funny because "böse" in German means "evil" or "nasty". I don't know if
anybody has that surname, but I would suspect not.

~~~
claudius
Wikipedia mentions a couple of ‘von Bose’, and I have to admit that I don’t
see any particularly tight link between ‘Bose’ and ‘böse’ – the umlaut does
have a special pronunciation, after all.

~~~
theorique
Good point, I guess native German speakers are better at forming that
distinction automatically, whereas umlaut-free language speakers probably have
a harder time of it.

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tim_hutton
"While standing around at the back of morning assembly Higgs noticed a name
that appeared more than once on the school's honours board. Higgs wondered who
PAM Dirac was and read up on the former pupil. He learned that Paul Dirac was
a founding father of quantum theory, and the closest Britain had to an
Einstein. Through Dirac, Higgs came to relish the arcane world of theoretical
physics."

[http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/02/peter-
higgs-p...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/02/peter-higgs-
profile-physicist)

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nemesisj
This is great news, and comes as a bit of relief to some. I remember talking
with a professor at the University of Edinburgh who was concerned about delays
with CERN referencing the fact that the Nobel prize isn't awarded
posthumously, and not as many are saying, not for theory without proof. Really
glad to see he made it!

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simbolit
is the nobel prize still the cornerstone of rewarding achievement in the
sciences?

sorry to be so snarky, but i am genuinely interested, having long lost any
trust in the peace prize comittee[0]. not to speak of the economics prize
(which is not really a nobel prize [1])

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laure...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_Peace_Prize_laureates)

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences)

edit: formatting

~~~
notjustanymike
I certainly lost a lot of faith in the Nobel peace prize when they gave it to
Obama. It seemed like a political gesture more than a true recognition of
significant accomplishments.

~~~
phaus
it took you this long? They awarded it to Al Gore for climate change awareness
(has alot to do with peace i guess?) Even worse, they have awarded it to
supporters of terrorism(Arafat), and other violent types of people(Mandela).

~~~
dman
Gandhi never won the prize.

~~~
cynest
One reason being he died unexpectedly (assassination). The Nobel Peace Prize
also wasn't awarded that year due to no suitable living candidates, which can
be considered an acknowledgement of him.

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bvv
This article provides some historical context to today's prize.

[http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/10/08/the-twists-and-
turns...](http://profmattstrassler.com/2013/10/08/the-twists-and-turns-of-
higgstory/)

------
alphaBetaGamma
Robert Brout would almost surely be sharing the prize if it could be awarded
posthumously.

I often saw him and Francois Anglert when doing my Ph.D. Robert Brout in
particular struck me as the kindest man on earth, and was perhaps someone who
though even deeper and more profoundly than Francois Anglert.

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henrikschroder
Anyone with more insight know if this was overdue, but finally awarded after
confirmation last year at CERN, or if it was pushed forward while last year's
work was fresh in people's minds?

~~~
jessriedel
The Nobel committee doesn't give out the prize for theoretical advances that
aren't backed up by experiment. Since the data was not yet overwhelmingly
conclusive at this time last year, this year's award was basically the
earliest possible award date for a decades-old idea.

~~~
vanattab
Really? What do you call Obama peace prize then.

~~~
dagw
The peace prize isn't awarded by the Nobel Committee, but by the Norwegian
Nobel Committee, which is an entirely separate organization.

~~~
lucozade
With a much deeper sense of irony

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namuol
Feynman on the Nobel Prize:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMaBmik4VYg)

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r0muald
Apparently most commentators were expecting it. I wonder if there was a
possibility that also the CERN team could be awarded the prize?

~~~
gitaarik
The award is for the theory that is confirmed. The people of CERN didn't get
awarded because they didn't come up with the theory, they just tested it.

~~~
mnl
Well... no. Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer were awarded the Nobel prize
in 1984 for the discovery of the W and Z particles (January 1983). Glashow,
Salam and Weinberg were awarded with it in 1979, before the Electroweak Theory
was fully confirmed, although there were solid hints at that time, it was a
bit premature.

I'm really not too happy about this because the Nobel prize has shunned
deserving scientists again. The consensus is that this mechanism can be
attributed to three papers, One from Englert and Brout, another from Higgs,
and yet another from Guralnik, Hagen and Kibble.

The silly rule of having to give the award to at most three living authors
rules out Brout and, as it would be a problem to choose one of GHK (because
they signed in alphabetical order, good for them) it's too obvious why they're
out, even when the current understanding of the theory can be traced back to
their string of papers.

This is not the first time: for instance, nobody really understands why
Cabibbo wasn't awarded some years ago along with Kobayashi and Maskawa... for
the CKM matrix!

~~~
VLM
Civilized behavior would imply private splitting of the cash, at least. I
can't remember an example of that ever happening with any Nobel award in any
field, although its probably happened. One of those things I'm not sure how to
google for without getting 99% unrelated. If done completely privately there
may be no public record of any sort...

~~~
Steuard
I've always had the impression that the cash is the _least_ important part of
a Nobel prize. Even if you're being purely mercenary about it, Nobel laureates
can probably get paid speaking engagements whenever they want. But it's the
prestige that really matters, and I suspect that for most scientists a share
of the cash would be a poor substitute.

~~~
ISL
As a physicist: There are lots of good reasons to go into physics. Doing it
for the money probably isn't one of them.

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cft
the theoretical foundation for Higgs mechanism was first discovered by Jeffrey
Goldstone from MIT:[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambu-
Goldstone_boson](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambu-Goldstone_boson)

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m4tthumphrey
Thanks, Englert and Higgs, thanks to you we won £300 at the pub quiz last
night. You rock.

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sgt101
I think that there are about 15 events in the 125Gev bump.

Just sayin'....

