François Englert

Born on 6 November 1932 in Etterbeek, Belgium, François Englert is a theoretical physicist who proposed the existence of the Higgs mechanism. He received a doctorate in physics from the Free University of Brussels in 1959. Although Englert has made significant contributions in a wide range of topics in theoretical physics, he is best known for his work describing what became known as the Higgs mechanism or Higgs field. Working with Robert Brout in 1964, Englert predicted the existence of a field that would endow other gauge vector fields with mass. Peter Higgs and, separately, the trio of Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen, and Tom Kibble, published papers the same year showing similar results. Theorists subsequently integrated the Higgs field and its carrier particle, the Higgs boson, into the standard model. But it would take until 2012 to confirm the existence of the particle , at the Large Hadron Collider. Englert and Higgs were awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work; Brout died in 2011. (Image credit: Bengt Nyman, CC BY 2.0 )

Date in History: 6 November 1932