“It was in 1964 that Dr. Higgs, then a 35-year old assistant professor at the University of Edinburgh, predicted the existence of a new particle — now known as the Higgs boson, or the ‘God particle’ — that would explain how other particles get mass. Half a century later, on July 4, 2012, he pulled out a handkerchief and wiped away a tear as he sat in a lecture hall at CERN, the European Organization of Nuclear Research in Geneva, and heard that his particle had finally been found.” He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. Read more about Dr. Higgs, now 84, here and here.