It’s that time of year again, when physicists of a certain age, even if they do not want to admit it, are afraid to step into their morning shower for fear of missing the call from Stockholm.
This year the pressure is magnified if you are Peter Higgs, 84, a legendarily shy and self-effacing professor at the University of Edinburgh whose name is attached to what is so far the landmark discovery in physics this century: a particle said to be the key to explaining the existence of mass, diversity and — yes — life in the universe, the Higgs boson. Most people know it as the “God particle.”
Dr. Higgs — the J. D. Salinger of physics — has already let it be known that he will not be available in any form on Tuesday. But if you believe the oddsmakers, the news media and the self-appointed prognosticators, Dr. Higgs is a lock to join the immortals on Tuesday around 5:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, when this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced.
But he will not be the only one pausing by the shower. At least four other living theorists can claim credit for coming up with the idea of the boson — quantum-speak for a force-particle — and its mother ship, the Higgs field, in three papers published back in 1964. Not to mention the 10,000 or so scientists who built the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the nuclear research organization, and then sifted through two trillion subatomic collisions to find the long-sought particle. According to tradition, a maximum of three living people can share the award.
It is rare that there is an obvious candidate for the physics prize. Many people think it would be crazy for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences not to recognize the rock star event of the decade, but nothing is ever for certain.
