Elusive How Peter Higgs solved the mystery of mass

Peter Higgs made one great discovery in his career as a particle physicist: the Higgs mechanism, a crucial ingredient in the modern understanding of elementary particles. Elusive, by the prominent particle physicist Frank Close (emer., Univ. of Oxford), is an intellectual biography and history of Higgs and his discovery. The first half of Close's book describes the theoretical work performed by Higgs and others during the 1960s; the second half chronicles the experimental confirmation of the Higgs mechanism almost 50 years later. Higgs is known to be modest in comparison to some of the outsize personalities who appear in the modern history of particle physics, and the author's personal access to Higgs makes his book essential for those interested in the history of modern physics. It should be added, however, that this work represents a point of view rather than a comprehensive history. For example, although Glashow, Salam, and Weinberg won the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work made possible by the Higgs mechanism, only Weinberg's award is mentioned, and Salam is not mentioned at all. The inclusion of many historical details makes the book both useful and entertaining, and it is a significant contribution to the history of modern particle physics. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals. --Michael C. Ogilvie, Washington University

A fine biography of a vital 20th-century physicist and his work. The 2012 announcement of the discovery of the Higgs particle made headlines, although few nonscientists understood its importance or were familiar with Peter Higgs (b. 1929), who received most of the credit and the Nobel Prize. Close, a science writer, Higgs colleague, and professor of physics at Oxford, illuminates Higgs' personal and professional life and makes an admirable effort to explain his complex work. The son of a British engineer, Higgs was (like most theoretical physicists) a brilliant student and mathematician. Obtaining his doctorate in molecular physics in 1954, he moved to the University of Edinburgh in 1960 where he taught, made his groundbreaking discoveries, and remains an emeritus professor. Higgs' fame rests on three papers published in the 1960s. Several fellow physicists published on the same subject during that time, and Higgs himself has never claimed exclusive credit. "The great physicist Richard Feynman once remarked that he didn't need any prizes; discovery itself was reward enough. Higgs had a similar attitude," writes Close, who agrees that others covered the same ground but believes that Higgs delivered a more complete description of the physics involved. Many pop-science writers describe Higgs' discoveries as an explanation of how particles gain mass. While an oversimplification, this is not wrong. However, most lay readers want to learn about the universe, the Big Bang, stars, black holes, galaxies, atoms, relativity, and even quantum mechanics; the question of why particles have mass seems abstruse. A lucid writer, Close chooses his words carefully and employs a torrent of analogies, but readers who skipped college physics may have to accept his enthusiasm on faith and enjoy an exciting account of the search, which required building the world's most powerful particle accelerator (and the world's biggest machine): the spectacular Large Hadron Collider beneath the French-Swiss border. An expert examination of "the holy grail of particle physics." Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.