Congratulating Peter Higgs and Francois Englert

British scientist Peter Higgs and Belgian scientist Francois Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, announced Oct. 8.

The award recognizes the researchers' role in proposing the existence of a particle, now known as the Higgs Boson, which explains how the basic building blocks of our universe have mass. A third scientist, Robert Brout, also worked on the pathbreaking paper published in 1964. However, Brout died in 2011 and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

Last year, researchers at U of T and around the world celebrated when scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern found a particle that confirmed the theories. U of T physicists involved in the Higgs boson search include: Pekka Sinervo, Pierre Savard, Peter Krieger, Robert Orr, David Bailey, William Trischuk and Richard Teuscher (Read about U of T researchers' key role in the discovery.)