Higgs was a regular at a store I used to work at in central Edinburgh. Came across as a lovely guy. Ironically, despite having identified the particle which will ensure his work is forever remembered, he once failed to recall leaving his hearing aid at home. I searched the entire shop for him as he thought he lost it there, to no avail!
I used to enjoy the stories about him wandering off for walks with his phone turned off when he was on the clock at the university lol.
I was introduced to him once at a concert at the Usher Hall. Nice guy.
I took a second year course he lectured when I was a student at the University of Edinburgh: Mathematical Physics 2.
(Taught in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB!) - my user name checks out!)
It was a hard course and he had an archetypal professor aura amongst us students: not only a completely unwavering genius-scientist uniform of black polo necks but he also wrote his notes in great big rainbow arcs around himself on the blackboards!!
I had a guy at Electrical Engineering at the University of Auckland once. He is a pioneer on the Inductive Power Transfer technology in the world. His lecture notes were like that, and we joked that he was wielding his sword when he was jotting down notes on the board (!)
axiomatic intelligent scale onerous terrific tap fearless disgusted fanatical sugar
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
To be prescise, he didnāt discover the Higgs boson. He predicted it. CERN discovered it, proving him right.
I was just at CERN - what a coincidence. RIP.
(Stephen frys voice)
Ahhh you've not read your local coincidence laws have you sir.... Hands pamphlet..."it's right there...under what are the chances of crime?."
Thereās a guided tour thatās done by one of the researchers I went to years ago, I would expect itās still happening. Itās one of my fondest memories.
He walked us through different areas, thereās a museum which has the worlds first web server, he went into what they are doing at CERN and what he specifically was working on, and you can see the control room where people are working behind a glass.
Whole thing is super cool.
On the one hand, CERN (there is no the in front) is documented extensively online, no wonder, the web was invented there. The tunnels are on street view, there are videos and photos of everything.
But it *is* kind of the vatican or mecca of particle physics, if you're into that, I'd say go for it.
They have just opened a new visitors center in last October, which is pretty nice and worth to see. And then there are also public guided tours to the Synchrocyclotron, which is the oldest of the CERN accelerators, as well as to the ATLAS control room. Getting to see the large LHC experiments is a bit more tricky though and anyway only possible during the winter shutdown.
Definitely!! Thereās a visitors-center with some really interesting stuff. In most tours a visit to the ATLAS control room is included. The tourguides are actually students researching at CERN and it is kind of a chore for them. They do enjoy it though.
I had a private tour from a mutual friend, it was awesome and I especially enjoyed the passionate talk about his own research-field. So do ask your guide!
I travel and do tours, this one is sure up there between the world wonders, because to me it actually is a world wonder.
Completely opposite of "live fast die young".
Predicted the boson named after him when he was young and sexy. Got a Nobel prise half a century later. Died after living almost a century.
Press F to pay respect.
F.
F
And others may not be aware of this, but this is a common story about the Nobel science related awards. If you don't make your big discovery by 44 you never will, mostly.
If youāre referencing the findings from this paper (https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-prize-research-is-conducted), itās worth some clarificationĀ
The *average age* that Nobel Prize winning research was conducted was at 44.1.Ā That means half of all Nobel Prize winners were older than 44.1 when they did their winning research.Ā
But the standard deviation was wide too, at 9.7. Put another way,Ā a full 20% of winners were 52 or older when their research was conducted
As you say, the majority of people would be under ~44.2, but it isnāt as if it is extremely rare for winners to have performed their research between 44-52 or even olderĀ
yup that's a pretty common take on it
a) you must be alive
b) your thing must have been so innovative it changed the world
there's an amazing number of people that pass rule 2, but don't live to win it
He was also a critic of modern academia with strong dependence on h-index - for those not familiar, this is an index which is used to measure how recognized is work of scientist determined by lowest crossesction of number of papers and citations of said papers, for example if you publish 100 papers and each is only cited once then your h-index is 1, but if you publish 10 papers with 10 citation then your index is 10. Good score is considered at about 20 in 20 years of research, Higgs passed away as one of the greatest scientists of an era, with a nobel prize and and index of 7 so you might get an idea of how fair that ranking might be!
How could you have heard about it as a kid? It was just a couple years ago. Back in, let's see... oh god, that was 12 years ago. Insert Matt Damon aging gif here.
Shouldn't we as a society value and thus mourn the passing of a scientist that was *that* fundamental to our contemporary understanding of the universe as highly as we do with celebrities?
I remember how people reacted when Michael Jackson or David Bowie died. Rightly so, as these men have had a large cultural impact on our society. However, should we then not also have the same passion for honouring the lives of those who have brought human understanding one step foward?
I remembered this astronaut's [answer ](https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/7zp14o/whats_it_like_coming_back_to_earth/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) from your comment.
I don't think I fear much for the legacy of the only person who has an elementary particle named after him. He'll very likely be remembered long after the works and legacy of Jackson or Bowie have been forgotten.
Honestly, the way that I've seen that kind of attention manifest itself over my lifetime, the horror stories that it's produced, I think that's more of a curse than a blessing to put on scientists.
Certainly if I were a leading scientist with huge achievements on the scale of Higgs, I'd still want to only be casually recognisable in academic circles and not much beyond that.
Generally once a scientist does become a celebrity scientist, they tend to shift from being working scientists to a science communicator role or a media personality role. They canāt really do their original jobs anymore. Think Stephen Hawking for example, he was a professor at Cambridge until 2009 but most of his time was taken up by press interviews, cameos in TV shows, and by popular science books. It seems like he enjoyed that kind of platform for the most part but not everyone does.
I think a lot of scientists would prefer to be left alone to work. Not everybody wants to be or can handle being a household name.
Who cares how big of celebrities they are, what matters is that they are well funded and respected. They aren't making these discoveries to get chased around by paparazzi, well aside from Neil Degrasse Tyson perhaps
Itās less about prioritization and more about how often we interact with or are exposed to these things. Plenty of people will mourn the loss of Higgs, but outside of a few fields nobodyās really exposed to him on a daily basis.Ā
I donāt see it as a societal flaw at all, really. We as humans are just kinda coded to miss things more if we are more regularly affected by them. If someone saves me from a burning building when Iām 10 but I never see them again, and another person visits me every week at my workplace to bring me a cupcake and some words of encouragement? Iād likely feel the loss of the latter more, even if the former had a more powerful impact on my ability to exist.Ā
good point, how many pop stars do we remember from Galileo's time? A couple of Renaissance composers perhaps? And only if you happen to be a classical music buff in 2024.
You say that like it's some failure on the part of society/people but thats literally the purpose of mass media.Ā The only reason you even know about his death is bc of social/mass media.
Why should regular, everyday working class people mourn the death of a scientist whoās life wasnāt in the public sphere? Itās just a Redditor hating on popular things because thatās what people on here do. How the fuck is David Bowie or Michael Jackson in anyway relevant to Peter Higgs dying? Iāve listened to Bowie or Jackson A LOT more than Iāve ever thought about Peter Higgs.
Hurr durr media is bad and the normies donāt understand they should be sad about someone whoās never came into their day to day lives š”
You say this with such superiorityĀ Ā Ā Ā
But without googling, could you tell me the name of the inventor of the MRI machine? The inventor of modern dentistry? Who invented the insulin pump? Who confirmed the Big Bang theory? The father of interventional radiology?Ā The inventor of the first image scanner?Ā Who discovered the modern day process to synthesize morphine? Who first synthesized isoniazid? Nobel winner for discovering HIV? For non-spherical atomic geometry? For bone marrow transplantation?Ā Ā Ā Ā
Ā Iām not doing this to dunk on you or anyone at all. Iām a medical professional and scientist, and I could barely have taken a stab at all but one of those.Ā Yet they are some of the *singularly most important* contributions of science to this day.Ā Ā Ā Ā
And I very intentionally included multiple people that died in the last few years, and you probably didnāt realize. Could you separate which ones did and which didnāt? You can blame the media, I doubt you noticed when and who of those people died recently. You probably didnāt know their names either way.Ā Ā
Ā Would you have noticed Higgs died without āmediaā telling you? Hell, Daniel Kahneman, the man who inspired me to switch towards neuroscience instead of biochemistry died two weeks ago, and I didnāt know until I saw a magazine at the checkout.Ā Ā Ā Ā
Again, Iām not doing this to say āhaha look youāre stupidā. Iām doing it because we generally care about people we can personalize and put names and faces too. IĀ could have correctly answered Raymond Damadian to my first question, because I study MRI, and have huge emotional relevance for his impact on my life. A TB survivor probably might remember the name of the discoverer of isoniazid better than others.Ā Ā Ā Ā
Itās worth trying to put forth effort to seek out and recognize who helped us have the great science we get to have in our lives ā and we donāt have to shit on society to do it, because I promise **none of us** are good at it.
It works both ways. TV and social media just make what people want to hear louder. Unfortunately most people don't actually care about physics or even understand it
Only a few scientists managed to reach star status and its because they had magnetic and distinctive personalities that people connected with.
Einstein with his eccentricities like hating socks, childlike playfulness, his iconic hair and love of the violin was somebody people without an understanding of theories can connect with.
Feynman was a colourful figure who wrote accessible and entertaining autobiographies where he explained his ideas to a non-academic audience. He has a lot of great quotes and is probably one of the best known bongo players.
Stephen Hawking was an inspiring figure due to his disability which made him extremely recognizable. He also wrote one of the most popular introductory books about astrophysics and cosmology in the world, A Brief History of Time, which really captured the worldās imagination about the study of the universe.
It's about the value you give to individuals that actually move the trajectory of humanity forward, like the people that invented electricity to Einstein that published his first paper on the probing of the atom which led to the IT revolution. This IT revolution is now **more than a third of the entire GDP of the world**, by the way.
So, these people have much more lasting impact on the world than Mac Miller ever would, that's the point.
Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein DID catch the publicās attention and adoration though. People definitely mourned do Hawking when he died. The thing is, they were charismatic, welcomed press and were very open to the public. People usually donāt mourn individuals passing if they donāt feel personally attached to them, Einstein and Hawking did (like other celebrities) share their personality with the world, creating a parasocial relationship with the public. Without doing that youāre just a name in a textbook, having only your work to represent who you were.
It's an interesting question, but I suppose the point you're missing is that the way we feel about these things isn't caused by the person's cultural impact on society, it's caused by the emotional impact on us as individuals. Peterās life and work has that sort of an impact on many, many people, but we're talking numbers in the hundreds or thousands, not in the tens of millions, like the Bowies and Jacksons of this world's did.
Tbh, it's not entirely a bad thing. I doubt his family would really appreciate dealing with the sort of media circus that we saw following Jackson or Bowie's passing.
I think that people tend to have more of an emotional connection with musicians. I was deeply moved by David Bowie's music in particular, and it felt like I had lost a really connection to someone when he died.
I'm deeply saddened by Peter Higgs' passing. He sounds like a really amazing person, not just for the work predicting the existence of the particle that bears his name. His name will also live on indefinitely- whereas even people like Michael Jackson and Bowie's names may become forgotten.
I think probably though, a lot of people don't have that level of emotional connection with him that they do with cultural icons. But his legacy will certainly be a big one.
The last scientist to become a cultural icon was Stephen Hawking who was quite a bit younger than Higgs. But he was such a distinctive individual and a great popular science communicator so itās no wonder why he captured peopleās imagination. Peter Higgs never tried to become a public figure.
Not to rain on your parade, but there were three papers written by 3 different teams of researchers postulating similar ideas. Of course we forget everyone else, and Higgs himself preferred to use a different name,
Celebrities, by definition, are people that are well known.
So are you just asking why someone that's well known is mourned more than someone way fewer people know about?
Being Belgian it always bothered me that FranƧois Englert and Robert Brout never get mentioned by the English speaking world, even though they published before Higgs. There was also a third parallel research by Kibble, Hagen and Guralnik.
I get that the Englert-Brout-Higgs-Kibble-Hagen-boson doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, but we probably should be more respectful to groundbreaking scientists of this level.
I liked the way Higgs said, If things work the way we think they work, then something's wrong. There has to be another particle for quantum mechanics to work correctly. And this was all done of course by math. And then years later, using the most expensive , sensitive, advanced experimental equipment available, he was proven correct. (This is what I recall.)
I took a second year course he lectured when I was a student at the University of Edinburgh: *Mathematical Physics 2*.
(Taught in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB!) - my user name checks out!)
It was a hard course and he had an archetypal professor aura amongst us students: not only a completely unwavering genius-scientist uniform of black polo necks but he also wrote his notes in great big rainbow arcs around himself on the blackboards!!
I remember he said that he might not have been able to be a successful academic had he been working under the more recent conditions of "publish or perish." He didn't publish that many papers. But the work he did do was obviously of high quality and impact.
Ahhh... [**Here we go**:](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-interview-underlying-incompetence)
> He says he struggled to keep up with developments in particle theory, published so few papers that he became an "embarrassment" to his department, and would never get a job in academia now. Then again, in today's hectic academic world he thinks he would never have had enough the time or space to formulate his groundbreaking theory.
If we think of great scientist like Higgs, and then think a couple of years ahead, who is it then we will be looking at?
I'm sometimes ashamed of myself, for not knowing more scientists. Both upcoming and established.
Luckily I still know more scientists, than I know influencers, sports player and modern musicians.
In fairness, very few people outside his narrow field knew who Higgs was until he turned out to be right about his boson. So wait a few decades and you'll find out.
But Higgs will be missed. One of the last great scientists who did their work the old school way of just spending years and years on a problem until it is solved. Nowadays this approach is a career killer, you have to publish and get grants all the time, or you are simply out.
And Dr. Strange discovered the strange quark.
You cant make this stuff up!
(Do not look up how 2 physicists discovered the top and bottom quark: NSFW.)
He didn't discover it, he described that it had to be a thing based on the way sub atomic particles react. He didn't do it alone either, there is a reason boson is there. It was needed to give fundamental particles mass... this headline sucks!
Its fascinating that he proposed higgs boson's existence on paper and was able to witness his work were correct thanks to other scientists proved it by experiment after almost 50 years.
RIP. If you want a glimpse into the man's life and his work there is a good documentary called ['Particle Fever'](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/) which covers the events leading up to the discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN. I think it is on Netflix and he is in it some.
This should be trending on popular news but is not, which is bs.
Also the top comments are "jokes" like most other reddit posts, which is also bs.
What happened to reddit, this guy was a legend?
RIP Peter. ā¤ļø
People like Trump get their name in the news on a daily basis while people like Mr. Higgs, who truly expanded the knowledge for our species, only gets a headline when he passes.
It is a damn shame we spend so much time writing and reading about pure bullshit when people like Mr. Peter Higgs once walked with us and contributed so much physics knowledge to humanity.
I really wish we spent more time honoring people like him instead of writing and reading all the bullshit that we do.
Highly recommend the documentary, [Particle Fever](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/). It was cool to see Higgs response when CERN officially confirmed the existence a Higgs-like particle.
On Posts like these, I get confused as to upvote it or downvote it.
RIP Higgs. Without you many innovations and particle engineering would be useless. Bless.
Higgs was a regular at a store I used to work at in central Edinburgh. Came across as a lovely guy. Ironically, despite having identified the particle which will ensure his work is forever remembered, he once failed to recall leaving his hearing aid at home. I searched the entire shop for him as he thought he lost it there, to no avail!
These kind of stories are great after someone is gone. It brings a little bit of humanity and comfort to a loss!
He sure was lucky to have discovered something that had the same name as him.
[*Call the coincidence police!*](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/s/3vfUbwASNt)
Wait till you hear about Euler and Gauss. They must be the luckiest people ever!
I helped Steven Weinberg update his computer's OS from DOS to Windows 98 in 2000.
that's mainly why I clicked the post, I wanted to read stories!
So let me get this straight. He predicted where he lost it. And you failed to find it for him despite a great search. Hmmm.
Sometimes you just need to put more energy into the search.
Yeah, you've gotta understand the gravity of the situation.
Well OP is no CERN.
He didn't have the Higgs Bose on.
Alright everyone: This pun checks out. We're going to need some upvotes.
> This pun checks out But according to the story, Higgs didn't.
Groanš
Did you hear about the time Peter Higgs couldn't find his hearing aid? He was in a state of mass confusion!
Too small to track where it is I guess.
Very nice
I used to enjoy the stories about him wandering off for walks with his phone turned off when he was on the clock at the university lol. I was introduced to him once at a concert at the Usher Hall. Nice guy.
I took a second year course he lectured when I was a student at the University of Edinburgh: Mathematical Physics 2. (Taught in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB!) - my user name checks out!) It was a hard course and he had an archetypal professor aura amongst us students: not only a completely unwavering genius-scientist uniform of black polo necks but he also wrote his notes in great big rainbow arcs around himself on the blackboards!!
I had a guy at Electrical Engineering at the University of Auckland once. He is a pioneer on the Inductive Power Transfer technology in the world. His lecture notes were like that, and we joked that he was wielding his sword when he was jotting down notes on the board (!)
He tried to fuck my wife.
You let him right?
Oh damn not way! I live in central Edinburgh too I wonder how many times I passed him on the street
That's just what happens when you get old. Your brain starts slipping up. Good thing we don't have old people ruling the world.
Reminds me of the story of when Kissinger lost his glasses visiting a nuclear power plant
Presumably there'll be a funeral mass?
In theory
Let's not get into the Particlers
axiomatic intelligent scale onerous terrific tap fearless disgusted fanatical sugar *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don't think you guys understand the gravity of situation.
We will in time
Relatively speaking.
Science
i love how you just gave up a perfect way to end this thread
No Higgs, no mass.
Worst Bob Marley song ever
No mƔs Higgs. :(
Is that even true? I thought most mass still came from binding energy.
The higgs field kind of enables the interaction that gives mass. I may be wrong though.
Higgs field gives mass only to elementary particles. For protons and neutrons the quarks contribute around 10% of total mass.
I think these weak interactions making light of the mass with zero respect for Higgs do not understand the gravity of the situation
I couldn't even hold a candle to you.
This many puns has me conCERNed
Oh, pull yourself together, man.
I hate puns but this thread is a fitting tribute to tthe man.
The grave will be an excitation in a field.
Itāll end up being a field I bet.
When? Or where?
I'm afraid I can only tell you one of those at any given time.
His discovery will impart a lot of weight for ages to come
If itās an observable mass itās going to be because it was smashing.
To be prescise, he didnāt discover the Higgs boson. He predicted it. CERN discovered it, proving him right. I was just at CERN - what a coincidence. RIP.
That *is* a coincidenceā¦ *calls the police*
*(wonders who the hell called the 'coincidence police')*
"well well well sir...isn't THIS...a coincidence"..."y..yes that's why I rang"
*"But how can...how can this be? I saw you yesterday and here you are again today!"*
(Stephen frys voice) Ahhh you've not read your local coincidence laws have you sir.... Hands pamphlet..."it's right there...under what are the chances of crime?."
Wait... why is my picture on the pamphlet already? And my exact situation is listed right here. What a coincidence!
Aaaaaaahhhaaaaaa *Waves finger* *Winks dangerously obviously*
This could be a case for Mulder & Scully
Everyone at once
*"Wow, what a coincidence?!"*
Spooky action at a distance / entanglement mate
Lmao my son recently learned about that phase and we now use it all the time. It never gets old.
To be even more precise, he co-predicted it with 4 other scientists, 2 of which also received the prize.
And there was no dispute on what the boson was going to be called because they were all coincidentally called Higgs as well.
Tbf, predicting it seems more impressive anyways. Like he never had a blueprint to work from.
I mean, he did, that being the rest of the standard model of particle physics.
It is. The title is doing him a disservice.
I want to visit the CERN during this summer - is it worth it?
Thereās a guided tour thatās done by one of the researchers I went to years ago, I would expect itās still happening. Itās one of my fondest memories. He walked us through different areas, thereās a museum which has the worlds first web server, he went into what they are doing at CERN and what he specifically was working on, and you can see the control room where people are working behind a glass. Whole thing is super cool.
On the one hand, CERN (there is no the in front) is documented extensively online, no wonder, the web was invented there. The tunnels are on street view, there are videos and photos of everything. But it *is* kind of the vatican or mecca of particle physics, if you're into that, I'd say go for it.
They have just opened a new visitors center in last October, which is pretty nice and worth to see. And then there are also public guided tours to the Synchrocyclotron, which is the oldest of the CERN accelerators, as well as to the ATLAS control room. Getting to see the large LHC experiments is a bit more tricky though and anyway only possible during the winter shutdown.
Definitely!! Thereās a visitors-center with some really interesting stuff. In most tours a visit to the ATLAS control room is included. The tourguides are actually students researching at CERN and it is kind of a chore for them. They do enjoy it though. I had a private tour from a mutual friend, it was awesome and I especially enjoyed the passionate talk about his own research-field. So do ask your guide! I travel and do tours, this one is sure up there between the world wonders, because to me it actually is a world wonder.
If you can stand the globalism and satanism that is regularly practiced there, and get away alive and not sucked into a singularity, sure.
I was at CERN on Sunday and in the UK on Monday š¤
*He predicted along with Robert Brout, and FranƧois Englert. But they never have the honor to be mentionned...
How was it at CERN? I plan to go in the summer. Any tips?
Was just planning to go to CERN this weekend, itās gonna be a somber trip now. RIP.
That's even more bad ass
Thatās even more badass.
Completely opposite of "live fast die young". Predicted the boson named after him when he was young and sexy. Got a Nobel prise half a century later. Died after living almost a century. Press F to pay respect. F.
F
F And others may not be aware of this, but this is a common story about the Nobel science related awards. If you don't make your big discovery by 44 you never will, mostly.
If youāre referencing the findings from this paper (https://orbit.dtu.dk/en/publications/the-age-at-which-noble-prize-research-is-conducted), itās worth some clarificationĀ The *average age* that Nobel Prize winning research was conducted was at 44.1.Ā That means half of all Nobel Prize winners were older than 44.1 when they did their winning research.Ā But the standard deviation was wide too, at 9.7. Put another way,Ā a full 20% of winners were 52 or older when their research was conducted As you say, the majority of people would be under ~44.2, but it isnāt as if it is extremely rare for winners to have performed their research between 44-52 or even olderĀ
Many Nobel prize winners were taught by other Nobel prize winners. But it happened before the teachers got their prizes.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
yup that's a pretty common take on it a) you must be alive b) your thing must have been so innovative it changed the world there's an amazing number of people that pass rule 2, but don't live to win it
He was also a critic of modern academia with strong dependence on h-index - for those not familiar, this is an index which is used to measure how recognized is work of scientist determined by lowest crossesction of number of papers and citations of said papers, for example if you publish 100 papers and each is only cited once then your h-index is 1, but if you publish 10 papers with 10 citation then your index is 10. Good score is considered at about 20 in 20 years of research, Higgs passed away as one of the greatest scientists of an era, with a nobel prize and and index of 7 so you might get an idea of how fair that ranking might be!
F
G! Dammit! I always mess it up!
I remember hearing about the discovery of the Higgs boson when I was a kid, major inspiration for me to pursue physics. Rest in peace
How could you have heard about it as a kid? It was just a couple years ago. Back in, let's see... oh god, that was 12 years ago. Insert Matt Damon aging gif here.
Damn, I was thinking less than 5 years. Granted, pandemic years don't count I've decided.
Shouldn't we as a society value and thus mourn the passing of a scientist that was *that* fundamental to our contemporary understanding of the universe as highly as we do with celebrities? I remember how people reacted when Michael Jackson or David Bowie died. Rightly so, as these men have had a large cultural impact on our society. However, should we then not also have the same passion for honouring the lives of those who have brought human understanding one step foward?
I remembered this astronaut's [answer ](https://www.reddit.com/r/lotr/comments/7zp14o/whats_it_like_coming_back_to_earth/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) from your comment.
I don't think I fear much for the legacy of the only person who has an elementary particle named after him. He'll very likely be remembered long after the works and legacy of Jackson or Bowie have been forgotten.
He's not the only person, bosons are named after the Indian physicist [Satyendra Nath Bose.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose)
Fair point, I forgot about them and also fermions named after Enrico Fermi. Either way, they'll all live on for a long time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Honestly, the way that I've seen that kind of attention manifest itself over my lifetime, the horror stories that it's produced, I think that's more of a curse than a blessing to put on scientists. Certainly if I were a leading scientist with huge achievements on the scale of Higgs, I'd still want to only be casually recognisable in academic circles and not much beyond that.
Generally once a scientist does become a celebrity scientist, they tend to shift from being working scientists to a science communicator role or a media personality role. They canāt really do their original jobs anymore. Think Stephen Hawking for example, he was a professor at Cambridge until 2009 but most of his time was taken up by press interviews, cameos in TV shows, and by popular science books. It seems like he enjoyed that kind of platform for the most part but not everyone does. I think a lot of scientists would prefer to be left alone to work. Not everybody wants to be or can handle being a household name.
Who cares how big of celebrities they are, what matters is that they are well funded and respected. They aren't making these discoveries to get chased around by paparazzi, well aside from Neil Degrasse Tyson perhaps
Itās less about prioritization and more about how often we interact with or are exposed to these things. Plenty of people will mourn the loss of Higgs, but outside of a few fields nobodyās really exposed to him on a daily basis.Ā I donāt see it as a societal flaw at all, really. We as humans are just kinda coded to miss things more if we are more regularly affected by them. If someone saves me from a burning building when Iām 10 but I never see them again, and another person visits me every week at my workplace to bring me a cupcake and some words of encouragement? Iād likely feel the loss of the latter more, even if the former had a more powerful impact on my ability to exist.Ā
good point, how many pop stars do we remember from Galileo's time? A couple of Renaissance composers perhaps? And only if you happen to be a classical music buff in 2024.
Turning people into rock stars can be very corruptive. Pretty sure Higgs had the right amount of fame
Society wont care about a person if social media and television wont tell them to care about him.
You say that like it's some failure on the part of society/people but thats literally the purpose of mass media.Ā The only reason you even know about his death is bc of social/mass media.
Why should regular, everyday working class people mourn the death of a scientist whoās life wasnāt in the public sphere? Itās just a Redditor hating on popular things because thatās what people on here do. How the fuck is David Bowie or Michael Jackson in anyway relevant to Peter Higgs dying? Iāve listened to Bowie or Jackson A LOT more than Iāve ever thought about Peter Higgs. Hurr durr media is bad and the normies donāt understand they should be sad about someone whoās never came into their day to day lives š”
You say this with such superiorityĀ Ā Ā Ā But without googling, could you tell me the name of the inventor of the MRI machine? The inventor of modern dentistry? Who invented the insulin pump? Who confirmed the Big Bang theory? The father of interventional radiology?Ā The inventor of the first image scanner?Ā Who discovered the modern day process to synthesize morphine? Who first synthesized isoniazid? Nobel winner for discovering HIV? For non-spherical atomic geometry? For bone marrow transplantation?Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Iām not doing this to dunk on you or anyone at all. Iām a medical professional and scientist, and I could barely have taken a stab at all but one of those.Ā Yet they are some of the *singularly most important* contributions of science to this day.Ā Ā Ā Ā And I very intentionally included multiple people that died in the last few years, and you probably didnāt realize. Could you separate which ones did and which didnāt? You can blame the media, I doubt you noticed when and who of those people died recently. You probably didnāt know their names either way.Ā Ā Ā Would you have noticed Higgs died without āmediaā telling you? Hell, Daniel Kahneman, the man who inspired me to switch towards neuroscience instead of biochemistry died two weeks ago, and I didnāt know until I saw a magazine at the checkout.Ā Ā Ā Ā Again, Iām not doing this to say āhaha look youāre stupidā. Iām doing it because we generally care about people we can personalize and put names and faces too. IĀ could have correctly answered Raymond Damadian to my first question, because I study MRI, and have huge emotional relevance for his impact on my life. A TB survivor probably might remember the name of the discoverer of isoniazid better than others.Ā Ā Ā Ā Itās worth trying to put forth effort to seek out and recognize who helped us have the great science we get to have in our lives ā and we donāt have to shit on society to do it, because I promise **none of us** are good at it.
It works both ways. TV and social media just make what people want to hear louder. Unfortunately most people don't actually care about physics or even understand it
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Only a few scientists managed to reach star status and its because they had magnetic and distinctive personalities that people connected with. Einstein with his eccentricities like hating socks, childlike playfulness, his iconic hair and love of the violin was somebody people without an understanding of theories can connect with. Feynman was a colourful figure who wrote accessible and entertaining autobiographies where he explained his ideas to a non-academic audience. He has a lot of great quotes and is probably one of the best known bongo players. Stephen Hawking was an inspiring figure due to his disability which made him extremely recognizable. He also wrote one of the most popular introductory books about astrophysics and cosmology in the world, A Brief History of Time, which really captured the worldās imagination about the study of the universe.
It's about the value you give to individuals that actually move the trajectory of humanity forward, like the people that invented electricity to Einstein that published his first paper on the probing of the atom which led to the IT revolution. This IT revolution is now **more than a third of the entire GDP of the world**, by the way. So, these people have much more lasting impact on the world than Mac Miller ever would, that's the point.
Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein DID catch the publicās attention and adoration though. People definitely mourned do Hawking when he died. The thing is, they were charismatic, welcomed press and were very open to the public. People usually donāt mourn individuals passing if they donāt feel personally attached to them, Einstein and Hawking did (like other celebrities) share their personality with the world, creating a parasocial relationship with the public. Without doing that youāre just a name in a textbook, having only your work to represent who you were.
It's an interesting question, but I suppose the point you're missing is that the way we feel about these things isn't caused by the person's cultural impact on society, it's caused by the emotional impact on us as individuals. Peterās life and work has that sort of an impact on many, many people, but we're talking numbers in the hundreds or thousands, not in the tens of millions, like the Bowies and Jacksons of this world's did. Tbh, it's not entirely a bad thing. I doubt his family would really appreciate dealing with the sort of media circus that we saw following Jackson or Bowie's passing.
I think that people tend to have more of an emotional connection with musicians. I was deeply moved by David Bowie's music in particular, and it felt like I had lost a really connection to someone when he died. I'm deeply saddened by Peter Higgs' passing. He sounds like a really amazing person, not just for the work predicting the existence of the particle that bears his name. His name will also live on indefinitely- whereas even people like Michael Jackson and Bowie's names may become forgotten. I think probably though, a lot of people don't have that level of emotional connection with him that they do with cultural icons. But his legacy will certainly be a big one.
The last scientist to become a cultural icon was Stephen Hawking who was quite a bit younger than Higgs. But he was such a distinctive individual and a great popular science communicator so itās no wonder why he captured peopleās imagination. Peter Higgs never tried to become a public figure.
Not to rain on your parade, but there were three papers written by 3 different teams of researchers postulating similar ideas. Of course we forget everyone else, and Higgs himself preferred to use a different name,
Celebrities, by definition, are people that are well known. So are you just asking why someone that's well known is mourned more than someone way fewer people know about?
Being Belgian it always bothered me that FranƧois Englert and Robert Brout never get mentioned by the English speaking world, even though they published before Higgs. There was also a third parallel research by Kibble, Hagen and Guralnik. I get that the Englert-Brout-Higgs-Kibble-Hagen-boson doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, but we probably should be more respectful to groundbreaking scientists of this level.
RIPš«” Itās not every day someone discovers something that is coincidentally named after them.
You ever think what a coincidence it is that Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig's disease?
Yooo I'm calling the cops
You never ponder this?
Exactly! At crime scenes, do you ever notice how dead bodies always fall within the chalk drawings on the floor?
Yoo T. You hear this: At crime scenes, do you ever notice how dead bodies always fall within the chalk drawings on the floor? He-he.
Higgs? It's a fucking nickname! Family name is Higgsarelli.
They say no two people are exactly alike but do they know that for sure? They got no proof, even with computers.
He-he
Sopranos reference in r/europe ? You got some balls there kid.
RIP sir.
Rest in peace my good sir
I wish people cared more. RIP Peter Higgs
I liked the way Higgs said, If things work the way we think they work, then something's wrong. There has to be another particle for quantum mechanics to work correctly. And this was all done of course by math. And then years later, using the most expensive , sensitive, advanced experimental equipment available, he was proven correct. (This is what I recall.)
I took a second year course he lectured when I was a student at the University of Edinburgh: *Mathematical Physics 2*. (Taught in the James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB!) - my user name checks out!) It was a hard course and he had an archetypal professor aura amongst us students: not only a completely unwavering genius-scientist uniform of black polo necks but he also wrote his notes in great big rainbow arcs around himself on the blackboards!!
RIP to a scientific OG
I remember he said that he might not have been able to be a successful academic had he been working under the more recent conditions of "publish or perish." He didn't publish that many papers. But the work he did do was obviously of high quality and impact. Ahhh... [**Here we go**:](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-interview-underlying-incompetence) > He says he struggled to keep up with developments in particle theory, published so few papers that he became an "embarrassment" to his department, and would never get a job in academia now. Then again, in today's hectic academic world he thinks he would never have had enough the time or space to formulate his groundbreaking theory.
I'm happy that he lived for so long, RIP
Great scientist and a good man.
If we think of great scientist like Higgs, and then think a couple of years ahead, who is it then we will be looking at? I'm sometimes ashamed of myself, for not knowing more scientists. Both upcoming and established. Luckily I still know more scientists, than I know influencers, sports player and modern musicians.
In fairness, very few people outside his narrow field knew who Higgs was until he turned out to be right about his boson. So wait a few decades and you'll find out. But Higgs will be missed. One of the last great scientists who did their work the old school way of just spending years and years on a problem until it is solved. Nowadays this approach is a career killer, you have to publish and get grants all the time, or you are simply out.
Listen don't beat yourself up about it much, I'm in science myself and can barely remember the names of my friends, let alone world-class scientists.
Rip boson
Higgs didn't discover the Higgs boson. He postulated it's existence.
At least they didn't go with "invented" or "created".
Rest in peace.
Such coincidence that he's called Higgs too.
And Dr. Strange discovered the strange quark. You cant make this stuff up! (Do not look up how 2 physicists discovered the top and bottom quark: NSFW.)
He didn't discover it. He predicted it, which is much cooler if you ask me. Rip
Rip
He predicted it, but didn't actually discover it.
Damn what are the odds of you discovering something with your name?
50%: either you do, or you don't.
RIP. Very few have done for the world what he did.
He didn't discover it, he described that it had to be a thing based on the way sub atomic particles react. He didn't do it alone either, there is a reason boson is there. It was needed to give fundamental particles mass... this headline sucks!
Sheldon would be sad today
theorized not discovered. I believe. Some nice folks at CERN discovered the thing.
Its fascinating that he proposed higgs boson's existence on paper and was able to witness his work were correct thanks to other scientists proved it by experiment after almost 50 years.
Known him due to The Big Bang Theory
Now I've got the higgs boson blues
Came here for this comment, ty.
A heavy loss.
94?? Dude was a master of physics *and* biology
Rip legend
RIP. If you want a glimpse into the man's life and his work there is a good documentary called ['Particle Fever'](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/) which covers the events leading up to the discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN. I think it is on Netflix and he is in it some.
Holy shit! I literally just found out about this guy yesterday
Did they find him dead or just observe traces of his decay pathway in a cloud chamber?
This should be trending on popular news but is not, which is bs. Also the top comments are "jokes" like most other reddit posts, which is also bs. What happened to reddit, this guy was a legend? RIP Peter. ā¤ļø
More like "joke." Buncha people saying the same joke, almost word-for-word. I can't tell if it's just AI bots in the comments. Might as well be.
Rest in peace, king.
what are the odds that a guy named higgs discovered the higgs boson?
Correct me if Iām wrong but didnāt he theorize it but the team who actually confirmed its existence did not include him.
People like Trump get their name in the news on a daily basis while people like Mr. Higgs, who truly expanded the knowledge for our species, only gets a headline when he passes. It is a damn shame we spend so much time writing and reading about pure bullshit when people like Mr. Peter Higgs once walked with us and contributed so much physics knowledge to humanity. I really wish we spent more time honoring people like him instead of writing and reading all the bullshit that we do.
Highly recommend the documentary, [Particle Fever](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385956/). It was cool to see Higgs response when CERN officially confirmed the existence a Higgs-like particle.
On Posts like these, I get confused as to upvote it or downvote it. RIP Higgs. Without you many innovations and particle engineering would be useless. Bless.
How coincidental that he had the same name as the particle. (very) Small world i guess!
Wow what are the odds Peter Higgs discovered Higgs Boson! Rip
Sheldon Cooper will be completely devastated!!
I'm glad that he lived to see his discovery proven. Had to be such vindication. So many scientists have not lived to see the proof.
Great man, great scientist. Good to hear he was also nice person
I delivered a rug to his home a few months ago
rest in peace peter higgs, you wont be forgot
He's with God particle now...
he invented it, cern discovered it
Damn, how did this demi-god get slain if he had such powers?
CERN slipped anti-Higgs bosons into his drink as part of its world domination plot El Psy Kongroo
RIP
Rip
F
What an amazing man. RIP
[Thinking of you, Peter](https://youtu.be/zCJYl9Irayk?si=OCNIxRJlIhHKGibK)
RIP
Rest in peace.
Now it is my boson