Scientists Celebrate Role in Higgs Discovery That Led to Nobel Prize

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences today awarded the Nobel Prize in physics to theorists Peter Higgs and Francois Englert to recognize their work developing the theory of what is now known as the Higgs field, which gives elementary particles mass. Thousands of scientists from around the world played a significant role in discovering the particle that proves the existence of the Higgs field, the Higgs boson. Brig Williams, Joseph Kroll, Eliot Lipeles and Evelyn Thomson, professors of physics in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts and Sciences, along with their students, postdoctoral fellows and technical staff, have played a large role in the design and construction of ATLAS, one of the two main particle detectors responsible for the discovery, and in the observation of the particles into which the Higgs boson decays. "Being a part of this monumental discovery has been the experience of a lifetime and the culmination of decades of work for us," said Williams. "It is especially gratifying to me that the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows played such a large role. " "Higgs and Englert elegantly solved a key question by positing the existence of a new particle, now known as the Higgs boson," Lipeles said. "Our work in searching for and ultimately detecting the Higgs was driven by the important role the particle plays in the theory of particle interactions.