Four Generations of the Higgs Boson

In 1964 Peter Higgs of the University of Edinburgh predicted the existence of the Higgs boson: a tiny, subatomic particle, which explains why other subatomic particles have a mass and therefore why the universe has substance.

Almost 50 years later, in 2012, physicists working at the world's largest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, finally discovered the Higgs boson.

Peter Higgs' work has inspired generations of physicists to work in particle physics: searching for the Higgs boson and discovering further wonders of the subatomic world.

Professor Emeritus Peter Higgs, Alan Walker MBE, Dr Victoria Martin and Francisca Garay, all of the University of Edinburgh, explain: the inspiration for the Higgs boson, how the Higgs boson fits into modern theories of particle physics, how the Higgs boson was discovered and what it's like to work at the Large Hadron Collider.

This public talk is organised as part of the outreach programme of the Irish Quantum Foundations 2013 conference.