The death of Peter Higgs on Tuesday 9 April, 2024, gave rise to attempts to explain his contribution to our understanding of the nature of the fundamental forces of the Universe. The eulogies affirm his status of a giant in the field. The attempts to explain that contribution to the layman have faced considerable difficulties.
I have tried to explain the limits to current understanding, and the need to rethink our deeplyheld assumptions about reality.
I write as one such layman, albeit it one with a PhD in radiation chemistry. In some mitigation, the entire theory of the fundamental building blocks of the Universe has changed dramatically by the work of theoretical and experimental physicists over the last fifty years.
I can do no more than to outline how commentators have grappled with communicating the work which earned Peter Higgs his Nobel Prize in 2013. His ideas transformed thinking about how particles acquire mass...