Two theoretical physicists received the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics Tuesday for their discovery of the Higgs boson particle, to which University of Wisconsin-Madison research teams made significant contributions, according to a university news release.
Peter Higgs and François Englert predicted the existence of the particle, which is central to the process by which matter has mass, nearly 50 years ago, according to the release.
Creating the Higgs boson requires the collision of protons at very high energies.
UW-Madison research, led by physicists Sau Lan Wu and Wesley Smith, played a crucial role in developing the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, which is located near Geneva, Switzerland, the release said. Their work led researchers to discover the particle in July 2012.
Also, UW-Madison computer scientist Miron Livny led the ongoing intensive data analysis required to find the particle, using principles he pioneered while working on campus, according to the release.
