Peter Higgs was one of the greats of particle physics. He transformed what we know about the building blocks of the universe

Peter Higgs, who gave his name to the subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson, has died aged 94. He was always a modest man, especially when considering that he was one of the greats of particle physics – the area of science concerned with the building blocks of matter. In 1964, a few years after arriving from London to take up a position at the University of Edinburgh, Higgs read a paper by the American theoretical physicist Philip Anderson. At the time, physicists did not have a theory...