In
1971 Gerard ’t Hooft published his article ‘Renormalizable Lagrangians for
Massive Yang-Mills Fields’. The article, building on research initiated by
Martinus Veltman, won them the 1999 Noble Prize in Physics. It established the
Standard Model of elementary particles and fields as a quantitative theory, a
realization of a renormalizable relativistic quantumfieldtheory. The success of
the Standard Model is based on ingenious, innovative experiments at equally
ingenious and innovative particle accelerators – the experiments provided the
ingredients of the Model (i.e. discovered the particles and fields) and the
precision measurements to allow quantitative tests; the Standard Model indeed
turned out to be spectacularly accurate. With one ingredient missing. Escaping
detection. The Higgs boson, absolutely required to make the Model work as ‘t
Hooft had shown in his 1971 article.
The
experimental discovery of the Higgs boson took several decades and a huge
effort of many excellent scientists and engineers. In addition it required
significant innovations and breakthroughs to render the experiments possible:
an accelerator with new applications of superconductivity, with newly developed
superconducting alloys for high current density and high fields; excellent
field quality and excellent vacuum for high quality beams and high collision
rates; detectors with 100 million read-out channels capable of handling one
billion collisions per second; radiation hard and novel detector materials; new
deep submicron technology for highly integrated and ‘radiation hard’
electronics; new computer architectures and the development of a worldwide
computing ‘grid’. It required an effective collaboration of thousands of
scientists and engineers of unprecedented complexity over many years.
The
LHC (Large Hadron Collider) project, including the experimental setups
(christened ATLAS and CMS), was successful: a highly non trivial achievement
crowned by the discovery of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV. An
experimental progamme of at least a decade is still ahead of us to fully
exploit the physics potential of the LHC (including that of two other
innovative but more specialized setups called LHCb and ALICE).
Remarkable
achievements, including breakthroughs in science, are sometimes awarded with
more or less renowned prizes. By far the most prestigious international
scientific prize is the Nobel Prize. Its prestige is based on the impressive
list of winners since the first prize was awarded in 1901, including Einstein
and many others.
The
discovery of the Higgs boson certainly qualifies for this highest scientific
honor. But the will of Alfred Nobel states that the prize shall be shared by at
most three persons. In practice that probably means that the prize will be
awarded to Higgs and Englert (his co-worker Brout being deceased), the
theorists who layed the foundations for the new ‘Higgs physics’ in theoretical
considerations published in 1964. Singling out the three most meritorious
scientists from the thousands whose talent, ingenuity and perseverance were
essential for the actual discovery of the Higgs particle, is not well possible.
This does not mean that I would not be ready to make a motivated proposal, but
it turns out to be impossible to organize wholehearted, generous support
of ‘the community’ for a selection of
only three. Nobel’s will does not offer the possibility of awarding the prize
to an organization either (with an exception for the Peace Prize), otherwise
the Higgs prize might be awarded to CERN, to be collected by its Director.
No
Nobel Prize for the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson then? No, but
come to the rescue Yuri Milner and his Foundation. He invented the Fundamental
Physics Prize (FPP) and handpicked the first nine (!) winners in 2012 and
awarded them 3 million dollars (!) each. The nine have in common that they are
theoretical physicists who ‘made transformative advances in the field’. In
contrast to the Nobel Prize these advances are not required to be corroborated
and substantiated by experimental verification. Higgs will/would never win the
Nobel Prize if the boson he predicted is/was not found experimentally.
The
first nine FPP winners were celebrated in a ceremony in Geneva, during the
evening of March 20, 2013, in the international conference center. Furthermore a
vast number of other FPP related prizes were awarded: in addition to the Fundamental
Physics Prize, the Special Fundamental Physics Prize, the Physics Frontiers
Prize and the New Horizons in Physics Prize. A total of well over twenty
winners – it was a long evening...
The
first Special Fundamental Physics Prize was awarded twice: one for Stephen
Hawking (3 million dollars for predicting black hole radiation) and one for the
experimental discovery of the Higgs boson. 3 million dollars shared (not
equally) by seven (7) recipients. When I was confidentially informed about this
‘Large Hadron Collider prize’ a couple of months ago I was excited, happy: seven
colleagues with most of whom I had closely worked together, including old
friends.
The
ceremony, alas, was not commensurate with the standing of the scientists, the
community they represent and missed the opportunity to celebrate science. I
felt alienated from my colleagues and my field, I felt nothing of the joy of
discovery. It was embarrassing. A famous actor leading the show. A famous piano
player playing the piano ‘virtuoso’. A famous journalist ‘interviewing’ the
recipients live from New York. Money can buy their presence, but not the ‘soul’
that is essential for a successful celebration.
Science
is intrinsically democratic, ‘inclusive’ for everybody with an open mind; that
is what the Fundamental Physics Prize should underline. And now, back to work.
Jos
Engelen
March
30, 2013
, waar l de lengte van de
slinger en g de versnelling van de
zwaartekracht.