Nobel prize winner Peter Higgs has won the world’s oldest scientific prize, the Royal Society’s Copley Medal, for his pioneering work on the theory of the Higgs boson, which was discovered in 2012. Higgs received the Copley Medal for his fundamental contribution to particle physics with his theory explaining the origin of mass in elementary particles, confirmed by the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider.

About Royal Society’s Copley Medal

• The Copley medal was first awarded by the Royal Society in 1731.
• The Copley Medal is a scientific award given by the Royal Society, London.
• It is given for  for “outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science.”
• It is given once in a year.
• The medal was created following a donation of £100 to be used for carrying out experiments by Sir Godfrey Copley.
• It is awarded for outstanding achievements in scientific research and has most recently been awarded to eminent scientists.

About Peter Higg:

• Higg is a British theoretical physicist, emeritus professor at the University of Edinburgh.
• In 1964, Higgs proposed a theory about the existence of a particle that explains why these other particles have a mass.
• The existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed by two experiments carried out at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012.
• The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to Higgs and Englert.