New Delhi: Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, Wednesday, called Peter Higgs, the physicist who proposed the Higgs Boson particle, a “smart human.”
“He was an especially smart human,” Musk wrote in a post on X.com.
The Nobel winner physicist, known for his theory that explains how elementary particles get their mass, died aged 94 on Monday, at his home following a short illness, according to a statement from Edinburgh University, UK.
He was “truly a gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world that surrounds us.”
Peter first proposed the existence of a new particle in 1964, while working as a lecturer at Edinburgh University. Its existence was confirmed about 50 years later in 2012 by researchers at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Switzerland.
Higgs’ theory revealed the existence of a field that is spread in the universe, with a particle of its own called Higgs, after the physicist.
According to him, this field gave mass to particles after the great Big Bang.
“His name will be remembered as long as we do physics in the form of the Higgs Boson,” said Brian Cox, Professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, UK, in a post on X.
