Peter Higgs, 84, a British theoretical physicist, will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics today in Stockholm for his pioneering research in the 1960’s related to the Higgs Boson particle theory (“The God Particle”).

The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers following his groundbreaking work in 1964 which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass.

He doubts that a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today’s academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: “It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964.”

Edinburgh university’s authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he “might get a Nobel prize…

There is no passion to be found playing small –
in settling for a life
that is less
than the one you are capable of living.”

– Nelson Mandela (July 18, 1918 – December 5, 2013)

Image Credit. Quote: Sundog