Englert and Higgs independently published research on the process by which particles get their mass, called the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism. Englert, a Belgium citizen, was born in 1932 and is now a professor emeritus at Université Libre de Bruxelles. Higgs is a professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom. The award money they will split is $1.25 million.
"The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN last year, which validates the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism, marks the culmination of decades of intellectual effort by many people around the world." said in a statement CERN Director General Rolf Heuer.
The Higgs boson is the key to resolving the origin of the mass. It was the missing piece of the Standard Model predicted theoretically when the scientists described the universe’s very small constituents. Other scientific theories can be verified based on the existence of the Higgs boson.
