François Englert (1932 – 2026)
4 days ago
- #theoretical physics
- #Nobel Prize
- #Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism
- François Englert passed away on 18 June at age 93 in Belgium.
- He and Robert Brout showed particles gain mass via a universal field.
- Peter Higgs independently proposed the same mechanism and predicted the Higgs boson.
- The Brout-Englert-Higgs field was confirmed in 2012 by ATLAS and CMS at the LHC.
- Englert and Higgs received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work.
- Englert’s career spanned from Cornell University to Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).
- He co-founded a research group exploring fundamental interactions, relativity, and cosmology.
- Englert remained engaged in theoretical physics, including visits to CERN post-discovery.
- The Higgs boson discovery opened new research avenues and could lead beyond the Standard Model.