British physicist Peter Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for predicting the particle now known as the Higgs boson. His work helped explain how elementary particles acquire mass through an invisible field that permeates the universe.
Higgs proposed the mechanism in 1964, independently of Belgian physicist François Englert and several other researchers. The theory predicted a previously unknown particle associated with the field. Almost five decades later, experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider found a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson in 2012. The discovery provided powerful evidence for the mechanism and the Standard Model of particle physics.
Higgs and Englert shared the 2013 Nobel Prize “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles.” A common misconception is that Higgs discovered the particle personally; his key contribution was theoretical prediction, while the experimental confirmation came from enormous detector collaborations at CERN. The boson is often nicknamed the “God particle,” although many physicists avoid that informal label.