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I can’t actually declare to have recognized the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs, however after the unhappy information emerged final week that he had died on 8 April on the age of 94, I used to be instantly reminded of my one brush with him.
An obituary within the Instances described Higgs as “heat, humorous and interesting” – and that was precisely the particular person I encountered once we met on the workplaces of IOP Publishing in Bristol, UK, in Might 2012.
Higgs, then 82, had come to Bristol to talk on the metropolis’s Pageant of Concepts and to open the “Dirac–Higgs Science Centre” at Cotham Faculty, the place he spent 5 years as a baby whereas his father was stationed within the metropolis as an engineer for the BBC in the course of the Second World Struggle.
Because the centre’s identify suggests, Higgs wasn’t the one Nobel laureate to have studied on the college. In its earlier guise because the Service provider Venturers’ Technical School, it had additionally been attended by Paul Dirac, whose identify the younger Higgs used to see on Cotham’s honours boards.
“In regards to the propopsed interview with Physics World, I’d be joyful to do that, however Dr Durrani needs to be warned that I’m an entire layman with regard to the LHC experiments.”
Peter Higgs
Jo Allen, at the moment head of media at IOP Publishing, which publishes Physics World, had bought wind of his impending go to and determined to ask Higgs if he wished to go to our workplaces and be interviewed by Physics World.
Rumours had been circulating on the time that physicists on the Giant Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN had been about to announce the invention of the boson that Higgs had predicted virtually 5 many years earlier – and we knew that an interview with Higgs can be eagerly lapped up.
Higgs, who had lengthy since retired, famously averted e-mails and barely – if ever – used his cellphone. So extra in hope than expectation, Allen – who was then head of selling at IOP Publishing – posted a letter to him at his flat in Edinburgh. A couple of weeks later, she was thrilled to obtain a two-page hand-written letter from him in return. Dated 1 Might 2012, it stated he was “delighted to simply accept” our invitation.
“On Might 16, I’m dedicated to being on the Bristol Pageant of Concepts,” Higgs wrote. “Nonetheless, I shall not be returning to Edinburgh till the night of Might 17, as a result of the particle physicists on the College of Bristol have persuaded me to offer a chat there (title “My Life as a Boson”) at 4 p.m.”
Higgs added that he was planning to have a espresso at 10 a.m. on 17 Might with an outdated colleague Trevor Priest from Exeter College, who had additionally been a pupil at Cotham. “So I needs to be free from about 11 o’clock,” Higgs concluded.
Whereas saying he was “joyful” to do an interview with Physics World, he insisted with trademark modesty that “Dr Durrani needs to be warned that I’m an entire layman with regard to the LHC experiments”. Higgs stated he would subsequently “follow the CERN line on what constitutes a discovery!”
“(Courtesy: Jo Allen, with permission from the property of Peter Higgs)”(Courtesy: Jo Allen, with permission from the property of Peter Higgs)
Within the interview, which you’ll take heed to right here, Higgs proved to be charming, open and pleasant. He talked about how the Higgs boson got here to be so named, what his analysis pursuits had been, why he eschewed faith – and what he thought the very best analogy anybody had ever made for the Higgs boson.
Eager to insist that others ought to get the credit score for his or her theoretical contributions, he was continually at pains to consult with the “so-called” Higgs boson. Not one to face on ceremony, he even remained unfazed when IOP Publishing’s tea woman by accident barged into the room along with her trolley, unaware an interview was happening.
After the interview, we took some pictures with Higgs. He then accepted a suggestion from Allen to drive him as much as Cotham Faculty – on the proviso that no physics was to be mentioned in the course of the brief journey by way of Bristol.
Lower than two months later, CERN introduced that the Higgs boson had been found. The next yr, Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics, collectively with François Englert.
I by no means noticed Higgs once more. Solely now, following his dying, do I notice how fortunate I’m to have met him, nonetheless transient that encounter was. And what a beautiful hand-written letter to have as a reminder.
The publish Peter Higgs: the story behind his interview with <em>Physics World</em> appeared first on Physics World.
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