Peter Higgs Nobel Laureate
I'm so delighted to see Peter Higgs and Francois Englert share the Nobel Prize for Physics this year for their work on the theory of the Higgs Boson.
During the summer, I wrote a short text about Professor Higgs, this accompanied a giant shimmering wall portrait Fellows of the Royal Society: Peter Higgs (2m x 3.5m, 2013) constructed for my exhibition at BEARSPACE Gallery "Come With Me If You Want To Live"....
"On the morning of July 4th 2012, Professor Peter Higgs FRS was seen to remove his spectacles and wipe away a tear. This most human of reactions, was in response to the affirmation of a life’s work spent building the Standard Model of particle physics. On that morning, the scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider announced to the world that they had compelling evidence to support the existence of the Higgs Boson. For us, as a species, this moment marks the point in our evolution where we now find ourselves capable of reaching into the very fabric of the universe and the beginning of mass itself. We have crafted our deities from millennia of imagination.
Now, as we stand on the precipice of truly understanding the beginning of the universe, the beginning of us and the beginning of everything, those old gods are no longer fit for purpose. We have no more need for miraculous weeping Madonnas when we have Professor Higgs solitary tear.
Society craves a new mythos. This is our emancipation."
