Physicist timeline

Peter Ware Higgs Physics Timeline

This static page gathers the Physics records in the database for Peter Ware Higgs.

34 records1929–2024

Peter Ware Higgs in the Physics archive

This static timeline brings together 34 physics records for Peter Ware Higgs, spanning 1929–2024. The records connect the physicist with events including Birth, Physics Degree, Masters Degree, Doctorate, Edinburgh Fellowship, London Research.

Locations and countries represented in this timeline include Great Britain. Use the chronological table below to follow the sequence of research, discoveries, appointments and related events.

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Physics records

Date	Person	Event	Place	Description
29 May 1929	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Birth	Newcastle upon Tyne, Great Britain	Is born in Newcastle upon Tyne to a Scottish mother and an English father who worked as a BBC sound engineer.
1950	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Physics Degree	London, Great Britain	Graduates from King's College London with first-class honours in physics.
1951	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Masters Degree	London, Great Britain	Receives an MSc from King's College London and continues research in theoretical physics.
1954	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Doctorate	London, Great Britain	Receives a PhD from King's College London for research on problems in the theory of molecular vibrations.
1954	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Edinburgh Fellowship	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Moves to the University of Edinburgh as a Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Senior Student.
1956	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	London Research	London, Great Britain	Returns to London and works at University College London and Imperial College before his permanent return to Edinburgh.
1960	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Edinburgh Lectureship	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Takes up a lectureship in mathematical physics at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics, University of Edinburgh.
19 October 1964	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Publishes Broken Symmetries and the Masses of Gauge Bosons, explicitly identifying the massive scalar excitation later called the Higgs boson.
19 October 1964	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Shows that spontaneous symmetry breaking in a gauge theory can avoid an unwanted massless particle while leaving a massive scalar particle in the theory.
1964	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Scalar Boson Prediction	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Develops the consequence that the symmetry-breaking mechanism should leave a massive scalar particle that could in principle be detected experimentally.
1964	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Symmetry Breaking Paper	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Publishes a short paper on broken symmetries that identifies a loophole allowing gauge theories to evade the usual massless-particle conclusion.
1970	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Reader	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Is promoted to Reader in Mathematical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.
1974	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Royal Society of Edinburgh	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
1980	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Personal Chair	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Is promoted to a Personal Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh.
1981	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Hughes Medal	London, Great Britain	Shares the Royal Society Hughes Medal with Tom Kibble for contributions to theoretical physics.
1983	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Royal Society	London, Great Britain	Is elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his contributions to theoretical physics.
1984	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Rutherford Medal	Great Britain, Great Britain	Shares the Institute of Physics Rutherford Medal with Tom Kibble.
1989	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN's LEP collider begin precision tests of electroweak theory and searches that increasingly constrain the possible mass of the Higgs boson.
1996	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Retirement	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Retires from the University of Edinburgh and becomes Professor Emeritus.
1997	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Dirac Medal	Great Britain, Great Britain	Receives the Institute of Physics Paul Dirac Medal and Prize for his contributions to theoretical particle physics.
2000	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees the LEP collider finish operations without a confirmed Higgs discovery, leaving the particle as a central target for future collider experiments.
2004	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Jerusalem, Great Britain	Shares the Wolf Prize in Physics with Robert Brout and Francois Englert for pioneering work that established the mechanism of mass generation.
2010	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Washington, Great Britain	Shares the J. J. Sakurai Prize for work explaining spontaneous symmetry breaking in relativistic gauge theory.
4 July 2012	Peter Ware Higgs Physicist	Large Hadron Collider Higgs Result	Geneva, Great Britain	Witnesses CERN announce a new particle consistent with the boson predicted by the symmetry-breaking mechanism associated with his work.
14 March 2013	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN report that additional data support the new particle having spin zero and positive parity, strengthening its identification as a Higgs boson.
14 March 2013	Peter Ware Higgs Physicist	Higgs Boson Confirmation	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN report that accumulating measurements increasingly support the new particle having the properties expected of a Higgs boson.
2013	Peter Higgs	Nobel Prize	Stockholm, Great Britain	Shares the Nobel Prize in Physics for the theoretical discovery of the mechanism explaining the origin of mass of subatomic particles.
2013	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Companion of Honour	Great Britain, Great Britain	Is appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in the New Year Honours.
23 June 2014	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN report stronger evidence that the Higgs boson decays directly to fermions, extending tests of how the Higgs field couples to matter particles.
2015	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Copley Medal	London, Great Britain	Receives the Royal Society's Copley Medal for his fundamental contribution to particle physics.
2018	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees ATLAS and CMS report observation of Higgs-boson decay to bottom quarks, confirming an important predicted coupling to fermionic matter.
4 July 2022	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Higgs Boson	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN mark ten years since the discovery with increasingly precise measurements supporting the Higgs boson's predicted spin-zero Standard Model properties.
4 July 2022	Peter Ware Higgs Physicist	Higgs Boson Tenth Anniversary	Geneva, Great Britain	Sees CERN commemorate ten years of increasingly precise measurements of the Higgs boson discovered with Large Hadron Collider data.
8 April 2024	Peter Ware Higgs Theoretical Physicist	Death	Edinburgh, Great Britain	Dies at home in Edinburgh at the age of ninety-four, leaving a central legacy in the Standard Model of particle physics.

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