On Tuesday the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Belgium's Francois Englert and Britain's Peter W. Higgs.
Higgs and Englert won for their theory on how the Higgs boson particle acquires mass, USA Today reports. Their work on the "God particle" was confirmed last year in Geneva at the CERN laboratory.
Higgs wrote in a statement, "I am overwhelmed to receive this award and thank the Royal Swedish Academy. I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."
Englert simply said he was "very happy" for winning the Nobel Prize.
The Nobel Prize committed announced the award was "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider."
According to The Wall Street Journal, Higgs and Englert met for the first time last year in Switzerland when testing their theory.
The award is not without controversy as other scientists were involved and claim credit for the boson. However, a Noble Prize can only be won by three people, and is not awarded posthumously. The two scientists published their theory back in 1964 with Robert Brout, who passed away in 2011. Carl Hagen, Tom Kibble and Gerald Guralnik also wrote a similar theory about the particle only a month after Higgs and Englert.
Guralnik said in a phone interview, "I'd be lying if I said it doesn't sting a little" in not being a part of the award.
image: Wikimedia Commons
