STOCKHOLM: Francois Englert of Belgium and Peter Higgs of Britain have won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle which explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets.
The jury said that the two scientists were honoured for “the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle.”
Both were frontrunners to share the eight million Swedish crown ($1.25 million) prize after their theoretical work was vindicated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) experiments.
