Edinburgh honour for Prof Higgs, 82

Feb 24 2012

Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs is to be honoured by the city which he has called home for more than half a century.

Professor Higgs, 82, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Edinburgh, will be presented with the Edinburgh Award 2011 at a ceremony at the City Chambers.

The Lord Provost of Edinburgh will present him with an engraved Loving Cup - a traditional two handled drinking vessel which represents friendship.

Prof Higgs, after whom the Higgs boson particle is named, is the fifth person to be honoured with the special award which recognises an outstanding contribution to the city.

The scientist, who was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, follows in the footsteps of writers Ian Rankin and JK Rowling, cyclist Sir Chris Hoy and judo expert George Kerr who have previously received the accolade.

He said: "It is a great honour to receive this award from the city that I fell in love with and is now my adopted home."

His work in the 1960s proposed the existence of a particle which came to be known as the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. It is an important component of the Standard Model of particle physics that helps explain how objects have mass.

The award comes following the announcement in December 2011 from scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear (Cern) in Switzerland that two independent experiments at the Large Hadron Collider had seen "tantalising hints" of the existence of the Higgs boson.

Asked what it would mean to him if scientists at Cern were to discover it, Prof Higgs said: "I will probably go and open a bottle of Champagne for a start to celebrate. It will certainly have an impact on my life I think."

A sculpture of Prof Higgs' handprints will be unveiled in the City Chambers quadrangle, where they have been engraved in Caithness stone alongside those of the previous Edinburgh Award recipients.