Higgs Centre Decennial Lecture with Frank Close

General event

[CANCELLED] Higgs Centre Decennial Lecture with Frank Close

  • Event time: 5:30pm until 7:30pm
  • Event date: 29th November 2022
  • Speaker: (University of Oxford)
  • Location: 50 George Square

Event details

In 1964 a young physicist at the University of Edinburgh, Peter Higgs, posited the existence of an ephemeral fundamental particle – today known as the Higgs Boson - which is key to the existence of the material universe. For 50 years, teams of scientists sought to prove this theory, which was sensationally confirmed on 4 July 2012, at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, awarding Higgs a Nobel Prize and making him the first person to have a single particle named after him.  

In this public talk based on his popular book “Elusive”, Frank Close reveals what the Higgs boson is, why scientists regard it as so important, explains why it took so long to discover and what new visions its discovery is opening. 

The talk is suitable for a general audience
 

About Frank Close (from Penguin Books):

"Frank Close is a Fellow of the Royal Society, Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University and Fellow Emeritus in Physics at Exeter College, Oxford. He is the author of The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe and most recently Trinity: The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History. He was formerly Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell, vice president of the British Association for Advancement of Science and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. He was awarded the Kelvin Medal of the Institute of Physics for his 'outstanding contributions to the public understanding of physics' in 1996, an OBE for 'services to research and the public understanding of science' in 2000, and the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for communicating science in 2013."

Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass

The story of the Higgs boson - the so-called 'God particle' - and the man who thought of it

Event resources

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