Physics and Prizes
09/10/13 05:42
I understand it is one of the rare pleasures of a very few select individuals. Here in the United States the phone call comes in the early hours of the morning. In Scotland the hour wouldn’t be quite so early. The caller, speaking with a Swedish accent, determines the identity of the person called and then announces that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Nobel Prize and states the category. Recipients of the prize know that they are in the running, but they do not know whether or not they are winners until the call from Sweden. However yesterday morning, the members of the Academy couldn’t find one of the people that they wished to inform.
Dr. Peter Higgs wasn’t home. He doesn’t use a cellphone. He doesn’t use a computer. He is 84 years old and he told his friends that he was going off by himself for a few days, without telling them where he was going. He has promised to return by Friday. Since he doesn’t use a computer and doesn’t have a cell phone, he may or may not know that he is to split the $1.2 million prize with Francois Englert of the Universite Libre de Buxelles in Belgium. It depends on whether or not he has access to a radio or has watched television from wherever he has gone for a little rest and quiet.
A press release from the University of Edinburgh, where Dr. Higgs continues his research indicated that they probably have been in contact with Dr. Higgs and that he is aware of the award. He is a modest man who likes his own company and wants to be able to continue his work without a fuss. He probably is avoiding all of the press attention that is normally given to Nobel Prize winners on purpose.
The award is hardly a surprise. There have been plenty of suggestions that Higgs and Englert be rewarded for the ground breaking theory of the Higgs boson, a particle that was theorized by a mathematical model and not directly observed until researchers at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland announced that they had discovered a particle matching the description of the Higgs boson. Thousands of particle physicists worked on the project.
It is likely that the young physicists are more excited about the award than the man whose name has been attached to this particle that was theorized in the Standard Model, a group of equations that has ruled particle physics for the last 50 years. According to this model, the universe is filled with energy that gives particles that move through it mass. Based on Einstein’s famous equation that reveals that energy and mass are the same, the equations predict that there are particles with mass obtained by passing through the field of energy. However, it took a lot of investment and many years before the theory could be proven by observation.
Physicists are used to theories that posit things that cannot yet be observed. But the discovery of the Higgs affirmed the fundamental assumption of theoretical physics that the cosmos is ruled by a consistent set of mathematical principles. For physicists the symmetry and elegance of the equations that express these rules or principles is exquisitely beautiful and inspires awe.
Someone started to call the Higgs boson the god particle, and the name stuck, though physicists, especially Dr. Higgs, do not like and do not use that name for the particle.
I think that Dr. Higgs has gotten one thing right. The fundamental beauty of the universe is not best known through prizes and media attention. The deepest joy of research is not the possibility of a prize, even a really big prize. It is the joy of discovery. Observing the beauty of the universe is its own reward.
Of course I have never met Dr. Peter Higgs. But I like him already. Before tackling the press conferences and questions and all of the other things that are going to be a part of his life between now and the December 10 awards ceremony in Stockholm and beyond, he took a little breather and headed off by himself to think. He is more inspired by the beauty of nature than by the accolades of other people.
I suspect that he may even be a bit embarrassed that the particle got named after him. After all, even though the pursuit of mathematics is often done by individuals, the search for the really big breakthroughs in science are hardly individual efforts. There were more than 10,000 physicists involved in the search for the Higgs. Back in 1964, it was Dr. Englert and his colleague Robert Brout, who first published a paper envisioning the process of the mass of the boson coming from energy. Dr. Higgs first attempt to publish his version of the theory was rejected by the journal Physics Letters published at CERN. They said that it has no relevance to physics. The paper was rewritten and eventually published by the journal, Physical Review Letters. As a part of the rewrite he added a paragraph at the end noting that the theory produced a new particle, of indeterminate mass. That particle became known as the Higgs boson. The paper was accepted for publication only with the provision that Dr. Higgs mention Dr. Englert and Dr. Brount’s paper, which was published seven weeks earlier.
Dr. Higgs has long known that the theory he proposed and the work that he did was in the context of a large group of scientists who were thinking similar thoughts and doing similar calculations around the world. Scientists at Imperial College, London, the University of Rochester and Brown University were also working on similar theories and produced similar papers. There has been an ongoing argument for nearly 60 years over who exactly did and said what back then.
Theoretical physicists aren’t used to the limelight. They usually do their work in universities without much public acclaim. Their realm is breathtakingly abstract and drama and public excitement are rare in the field.
It’s good to have the scientists recognized for their work. But the prize pales in comparison to the glory of the universe.