How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass

Elusive

The story of the Higgs boson - the so-called 'God particle' - and the man who thought of it 
 
In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. 
 
For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them. 
 
This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgs's responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgs's fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

thorough and fascinating ... Close spoke at length to Higgs and the result is a highly detailed and rich narrative ... a piece of scientific history.

An illuminating guide to the man and the science behind the Higgs boson ... the tale of the conception and discovery of the Higgs boson, a tiny tremor in an energy field that pervades the whole universe, is one of the most important in modern physics. Without the Higgs there would be no atoms or people or planets or stars or anything except restless particles zipping through space in splendid isolation. Close, a particle physicist who has served as head of communications and public education at Cern, is an excellent guide to the knotty science of that story, as well as what we do know about the mysterious man himself.

a clear, vivid and occasionally even beautiful portrait of a scientific breakthrough: the tale of how a relatively obscure Scotland-based physicist developed a stunning theory, one that would help illuminate the invisible, particulate web that holds our universe together

a five star book - it reaches parts other books on the Higgs have failed to reach and Frank Close does a brilliant job

A fascinating biography of an elusive particle and the equally elusive man who predicted its existence half a century before it was found. If the Higgs boson is the God particle then I feel I have glimpsed the mind of its creator.

Close tells the intertwined stories of Higgs's life and the discovery of the Higgs boson with the aid of a deep understanding of the physics involved and the benefit of many meetings with Higgs himself. There have been other books on the same theme, but this is far and away the best. Where Close excels is in explaining the fundamental principles of particle physics in language anyone likely to pick up this book will understand. ... Elusive works as a biography of Peter Higgs, as an account of one of the greatest intellectual advances in human history and, best of all, as an answer to anyone who asks why we should bother to carry out experiments like those performed at CERN. Buy it.

Close is among today's best writers on the history of quantum mechanics

Particular brilliance ... This accessible account tells the story of the quest, and of the man who made it possible

reveals the sheer complexity, detail and dazzling precision that, for the scientist, constitutes 'beauty in nature'. Close maintains a strong narrative line - we are watching and waiting throughout for the Higgs boson to be identified.

A perfect marriage of subject and writer. With verve, insight, and rigor, Frank Close beautifully illuminates the life and times of one of physics' great, unheralded giants. Elusive is a triumph of a book, and one worthy of its subject's extraordinary contributions.

Elusive is both a deep, exciting intellectual history and an elegantly told portrait of a quiet man whose 'one great idea' changed modern physics forever. Close marries the exotic details of contemporary particle physics theory with the very human aspects of how that theory came to be. An enlightening read from one of our very best writers and practitioners of physics.

author of The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Rich, compelling, and surprising. Fundamental physics can be equal parts awe-inspiring and head-spinning, and Close masterfully captures those qualities in this deeply satisfying tale of Peter Higgs's convoluted, and very human, journey through life and science.

beautifully, engagingly written ... I was reassured by the characteristic wisdom and honesty of Close's judgement that, while the discovery of the Higgs particle completes the Standard Model of the atom, "Internal completeness is a mathematical requirement, whereas describing the world around us is the demand of natural philosophy". That sentence alone makes Elusive my book of the year.

Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year

Frank Close is probably the perfect person to tell the tale of Higgs and his boson. A serious physicist himself, he is also an exceptional author - and, unlike with most authors, his subject actually occasionally speaks to him.

the first full biography of Higgs ... focuses just as much on Higgs the particle as he does on Higgs the scientist, and the physics concepts he explores can be daunting. But this excellent book is well worth the effort.

A compelling account of the long search for the Higgs boson

Because there would be no atoms or molecules without the intervention of the Higgs field, our very existence is a consequence of its reality ... a compulsive read. Besides explaining the physics and exploring the many personalities involved, it also conveys the excitement of physics research, the missed opportunities, the happy coincidences, the false trails, the social networks, the collaborations and professional rivalries. Like an established scientific fact that will stand for all time, this book is a definitive account of an historic scientific achievement.

In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist. 
 
For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of this boson. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. 
 
This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History

Trinity

'Everything about this story is astounding' Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times 
 
"Trinity" was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. Trinity is now also the extraordinary story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. 
 
Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes in unprecedented detail how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, both in the UK and after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying. 
 
Fuchs returned to Britain in August 1946 still undetected and became central to the UK's independent effort to develop nuclear weapons. Close describes the febrile atmosphere at Harwell, the nuclear physics laboratory near Oxford, where many of the key players were quartered, and the charged relationships which developed there. He uncovers fresh evidence about the role of the crucial VENONA signals decryptions, and shows how, despite mistakes made by both MI5 and the FBI, the net gradually closed around Fuchs, building an intolerable pressure which finally cracked him. 
 
The Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear device in August 1949, far earlier than the US or UK expected. In 1951, the US Congressional Committee on Atomic Espionage concluded, 'Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations'. This book is the most comprehensive account yet published of these events, and of the tragic figure at their centre.

A masterclass in thriller writing, it bears comparison with the most gripping spy sagas of Ben Macintyre

A brilliant new biography ... The book introduces crucial changes to ... the official version of events.

Engrossing, brilliantly researched ... The scale of Fuchs's spying was astounding, as were its consequences

He has delved into the archives to produce a remarkable story ... meticulous but highly readable

Frank Close is Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics at Oxford University and Fellow Emeritus in Physics at Exeter College, Oxford. He was formerly Head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell, vice president of the British Association for Advancement of Science and Head of Communications and Public Education at CERN. He was awarded the Kelvin Medal of the Institute of Physics for his 'outstanding contributions to the public understanding of physics' in 1996, an OBE for 'services to research and the public understanding of science' in 2000, and the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for communicating science in 2013. As a young man he worked with Rudolf Peierls, in circumstances he describes in this book.

'Trinity' was the codename for the test explosion of the atomic bomb in New Mexico on 16 July 1945. This exceptional book - Trinity - tells the story of the bomb's metaphorical father, Rudolf Peierls; his intellectual son, the atomic spy, Klaus Fuchs, and the ghosts of the security services in Britain, the USA and USSR. 
 
Against the background of pre-war Nazi Germany, the Second World War and the following Cold War, the book traces how Peierls brought Fuchs into his family and his laboratory, only to be betrayed. It describes how Fuchs became a spy, his motivations and the information he passed to his Soviet contacts, both in the UK and after he went with Peierls to join the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944. Frank Close is himself a distinguished nuclear physicist: uniquely, the book explains the science as well as the spying. Fuchs returned to Britain in August 1946 and became central to the UK's independent effort to develop nuclear weapons. Close describes the febrile atmosphere at Harwell, the nuclear physics laboratory near Oxford, and the charged relationships which developed there, and shows how - despite mistakes made by both MI5 and the FBI - the net gradually closed around Fuchs, building an intolerable pressure which finally cracked him. 
 
The Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear device in August 1949, far earlier than the US or UK expected. In 1951, the US Congressional Committee on Atomic Espionage concluded, 'Fuchs alone has influenced the safety of more people and accomplished greater damage than any other spy not only in the history of the United States, but in the history of nations'. This book is the most comprehensive account yet published of these events, and of the tragic figure at their centre.

Frank Close

Stirring ... Close's ensemble drama is a powerful corrective to the myth of the solitary genius. An eminent theoretical physicist, he walks us step-by-step through what he calls the 'Third Industrial Revolution', [shining] a light on the bustling cast of scientists whose 50-year pursuit of knowledge led ineluctably to the atomic bomb. The depth of Close's knowledge throws up surprises even if you know the territory ... he convenes these fascinating personalities deftly and has an abundant supply of thrills, tragedies and gratifying trivia.

Close writes with elegance and lucidity about the resulting experiments and investigations [and] the breakthroughs that led to the atom bomb [so that] the sense of wonderment and awe that drives the quest shines through. Close also turns the spotlight on figures often forgotten, such as Ettore Majorana, a young Sicilian physicist, whom Fermi rated as a genius to rank alongside Newton and who did much to unravel the mysteries of atomic structure.

Destroyer of Worlds is a cogent, detailed account of one of history's brightest and darkest chapters, in which amazing scientific insights into atoms and their nuclei coincided with fascism and world-wide conflict. Frank Close shows us how the initial dreams of beneficial atomic energy were transmuted, with frightening speed, into nightmares. Amidst our current enthusiasm for artificial intelligence and other game-changing technologies, this book offers us all a stern warning

Matt Strassler, author of Waves in an Impossible Sea

Kinetic, dramatic, and compulsively readable, Destroyer of Worlds follows dozens of astounding scientific discoveries that led to the development of nuclear weapons. In powerful, plain language, Close connects humanity’s unstoppable scientific curiosity to our species’ strange willingness to visit existential threats upon ourselves

Patchen Barss, author of The Impossible Man

If you enjoyed the movie “Oppenheimer,” you will be thrilled by Frank Close’s Destroyer of Worlds. With a knack for explaining the history of nuclear energy in simple terms, Close takes us to the “rooms where it happened,” revealing the struggles, mistakes, and triumphs that led from the discovery of radioactivity to up to the nuclear age

Robert Cahn, co-author of Grace in All Simplicity

Once again, Frank Close explains sophisticated science in a way that anyone can understand, and tells a gripping story in the process: how a smudge in a photographic plate in March 1896 led, almost inexorably, to the development of the most terrifying weapons of war ever created. Along the way we are introduced to the fascinating characters who propelled this drama, people like Roentgen and Becquerel, Rutherford and the Curies, Bohr and Einstein, Fermi and Szilard, Teller and Oppenheimer, and a host of other geniuses whose scientific curiosity led mankind down a dark path indeed. For those interested in how the quest to understand radioactivity and the atomic nucleus led to the development of the hydrogen bomb, this book is a great place to start

David Schwartz, author of The Last Man Who Knew Everything

Close recounts the story that led from the scientific discovery of the perplexing phenomenon of radioactivity at the end of the 19th century to potentially world-destroying weapons six decades later ... a splendid history

Destroyer of Worlds tries to live up to the jeopardy of its title by attempting to solve the mystery of Ettore Majorana [and] shows how it took many great minds to bring the nuclear genie out of its lamp. Close's main focus is the female physicists who escaped their share of the nuclear limelight.

A persuasive account… admirable in its honesty. Close is fortunate with his cast of characters, and the fact that their overlapping lives often played out as a dark soap opera… Close explains it better than anyone ever has – and maybe even could

Frank Close’s Destroyer of Worlds begins, in a flash-forwarding prelude, with the famous Trinity test of the first atomic bomb. It ends, more or less, with the detonation of the true destroyers of worlds, the thermonuclear H-bombs that made Trinity look like a Roman candle. In between is the entire history of nuclear science—and a growing sense of tragedy. Starting with Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity, in the late 19th century, and continuing with the work of researchers such as Marie Curie, Ernest Rutherford, Lise Meitner and Enrico Fermi, Close’s is a magisterial account of an exciting—and often courageous—area of scientific endeavour.

Anyone left intellectually unsated by recent Oppenheimer-mania will relish Destroyer of Worlds (Allen Lane), in which physicist Frank Close ventures beyond the Manhattan project to tell the gripping story of the nuclear age. Beginning with the 19th-century discovery of a smudge on a photographic plate, Close spins a history that, via Hiroshima, Nagasaki and a lot of nimbly explained physics, closes seven decades later with the Tsar Bomba, a Soviet weapon detonated in 1961.

Guardian, Best Science and Nature Books of the Year

The Deep History of the Nuclear Age: 1895-1965

Henry Becquerel’s accidental discovery, in Paris in 1896, of a faint smudge on a photographic plate sparked a chain of discoveries which would unleash the atomic age. 
 
Destroyer of Worlds is the story of how pursuit of this hidden source of nuclear power, which began innocently and collaboratively, was overwhelmed by the politics of the 1930s, and following devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki opened the way to a still more terrible possibility: a thermonuclear bomb, the so-called “backyard weapon”, that could destroy all life on earth – from anywhere. 
 
The story spans decades and continents, moving from Becquerel to Ernest Rutherford, the Cambridge-based, New Zealand scientist who first split the atom, expands to include Enrico Fermi in Rome, Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in Berlin and the Joliot-Curies in Paris, leading to the appearance of Robert Oppenheimer before climaxing with increasingly horrifying developments in the USA and USSR. The roles of three remarkable women – Lise Meitner, Ida Noddack and Irene Curie – are re-evaluated, and there are new insights into the work of Ettore Majorana, Fermi’s mercurial but brilliant assistant, who mysteriously disappeared in 1938, possibly after foreseeing the explosive power of nuclear energy. Above all, this is a story of how knowledge is often advanced by personal convictions and relationships, an indeed by chance, in a remarkable way.

Frank Close

Praise for Destroyer of Worlds

Stirring ... Close's ensemble drama is a powerful corrective to the myth of the solitary genius. An eminent theoretical physicist, he walks us step-by-step through what he calls the 'Third Industrial Revoluti ...

Close writes with elegance and lucidity about the resulting experiments and investigations [and] the breakthroughs that led to the atom bomb [so that] the sense of wonderment and awe that drives the quest ...

Destroyer of Worlds is a cogent, detailed account of one of history's brightest and darkest chapters, in which amazing scientific insights into atoms and their nuclei coincided with fascism and world-w ...

Stirring ... Close's ensemble drama is a powerful corrective to the myth of the solitary genius. An eminent theoretical physicist, he walks us step-by-step through what he calls the 'Third Industrial Revoluti ...

Close writes with elegance and lucidity about the resulting experiments and investigations [and] the breakthroughs that led to the atom bomb [so that] the sense of wonderment and awe that drives the quest ...

Destroyer of Worlds is a cogent, detailed account of one of history's brightest and darkest chapters, in which amazing scientific insights into atoms and their nuclei coincided with fascism and world-w ...

Stirring ... Close's ensemble drama is a powerful corrective to the myth of the solitary genius. An eminent theoretical physicist, he walks us step-by-step through what he calls the 'Third Industrial Revoluti ...

Close writes with elegance and lucidity about the resulting experiments and investigations [and] the breakthroughs that led to the atom bomb [so that] the sense of wonderment and awe that drives the quest ...

Destroyer of Worlds is a cogent, detailed account of one of history's brightest and darkest chapters, in which amazing scientific insights into atoms and their nuclei coincided with fascism and world-w ...

Books by Frank Close

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