On 8th October 2013 it was announced that two scientists – Peter Higgs, from the University of Edinburgh, and Francois Englert from Belgium – have won the Nobel prize in Physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson.  In the 1960s, they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass.

Where does this mysterious particle fit into our picture of the universe? In this article, published in Thinking Faith.org, former particle physicist, Fr Andrew Pinsent, explains the science behind the discovery of the Higgs and introduces us to some of the most crucial figures in the centuries of research upon which its prediction was based.