Who will get the Nobel Prize for the Higgs?

All week I was waiting for a brief and interesting note about the likely Nobel laureates in physics for the discovery of the Higgs boson, and finally, Seth Zenz, one of the quantumdiaries bloggers, published a small article , with the translation of which I will introduce you. Why did this topic interest me right now? Judge for yourself - the official confirmation that the open particle is indeed a Higgs boson only appeared this year (that is, this achievement should be awarded this year), and before the announcement of the Nobel Prize winners less than a week is left!

According to Thomson Reuters (and not only), this year the Nobel Prize in Physics will go to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs for their theory of the existence of a boson, later named after them. The award of this prestigious award for the recognition and appreciation of the developed theory to only two of these scientists will certainly be a strong simplification - Robert Braut, who worked with Englert, died in 2011; Herald Huralnik, Karl Hagen and Tom Kibble independently published the results of their work on the subject at the same time as Higgs, Englert and Braut. This six was already awarded the Sakurai Prize in the field of theoretical physics of elementary particles in 2010 for "the discovery of the Higgs mechanism of breaking electroweak symmetry," but it is obvious that the Nobel Prize is much more prestigious.
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If only two scientists out of six receive the award, this will be entirely within the tradition of awarding the Nobel Prize. Although the greatest scientific discoveries were made by brilliant scientists, often such achievements were the results of joint development and exchange of ideas. The positive side of such an award will be some symbolism of the award, awarded to the two most famous scientists who have made the greatest efforts in solving this issue.

Of course, the main reason for interest in the Higgs boson is the experimental confirmation of its existence. Is it possible that the reward will also be received by those who carried out experimental work on finding it? Frankly, I do not see how you can reward an individual for the efforts that have made thousands of people over several decades. These people solved a huge number of problems during the construction of the largest accelerator complex ever built on Earth. And I would like the Nobel Committee to change its traditions and award CERN itself with a prize in physics, along with scientists.

The prize awarded by CERN would also be symbolic. Not all those who participated in the work on the Higgs boson work at CERN, thousands of participants in this process from the very beginning worked in various laboratories and universities around the world. But as the “smithy” of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN symbolizes the tremendous work that has been done to make this discovery possible. It was not a flash of insight of one brilliant scientist, but the work of a huge team that daily resolves the most complex scientific and technical problems, in short, everything happened as usual and a “big science” is created.

In order to diversify my reasoning with a small amount of humor, take a look at the article Scientific American, the authors of which decided to award the Higgs boson to the Nobel Prize in advance. My favorite excerpt: “Employees of the PR department at CERN dressed in huge costumes of the Higgs bosons, doing everything possible to portray the fleeting nature of this particle: rushing from one end of the room to the other, now and then hiding and appearing from behind the curtains, and holding their breathing, briefly answered questions about symmetry and vacuum fluctuations . ”

The Nobel Prize winners in physics will be announced this Wednesday, October 8th.

Sources:
http://www.quantumdiaries.org/2013/10/01/a-higgs-nobel-and-to-whom/
http://thomsonreuters.com/press-releases/092013/nobel-laureates
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2013/09/30/in-surprise-advance-announcement-2013-nobel-prize-in-physics-awarded-to-higgs-boson/
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/about/prize_announcements/
http://thescience.ru/2013/10/04/a-higgs-nobel-and-to-whom/