Peter Higgs quotes

The way that the background fields generates mass is rather like the way in which when light passes through a transparent medium like glass or water, it gets slowed down. It no longer travels with the fundamental velocity of light c. And that's the way to think of the generation of mass. (Peter Higgs)

When you look at a vacuum in a quantum theory of fields, it isn't exactly nothing.

Peter Higgs

The point came when people were doing things I didn't feel competent to do myself. I'm not being modest, I honestly get lost. I was lucky in spotting what I did when I did, but there comes a point where you realise what you're doing is not going to be much good.

Peter Higgs

This summer I have discovered something totally useless.

Peter Higgs

There is a sort of mythology that grows up about what happened, which is different from what really did happen.

Peter Higgs

I was an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises. A message would go round the department: 'Please give a list of your recent publications.' And I would send back a statement: 'None.'

Peter Higgs

It's about understanding! Understanding the world!

Peter Higgs

Higgs mechanism should be renamed the "ABEGHHK'tH mechanism”.

Peter Higgs

It's very nice to be right sometimes ... it has certainly been a long wait.

Peter Higgs

It's nice to be right sometimes.

Peter Higgs

I'm rather cynical about the way the honours system is used, frankly. A whole lot of the honours system is used for political purposes by the government in power. (Peter Higgs)

I was already, I think, at the age of 18, showing signs of being incompetent in the lab.

Peter Higgs

Nobody else took what I was doing seriously, so nobody would want to work with me. I was thought to be a bit eccentric and maybe cranky.

Peter Higgs

If the U.K. were threatening to withdraw from Europe, I would certainly want Scotland to be out of that.

Peter Higgs

The Nobel Prize has been a disturbance at the beginning of October for some years. It would be gratifying to win, but it would be quite an ordeal, too, with all the events which go on for two days. I'd think carefully about what I was doing the day it is announced and maybe not be around, or be around, but elsewhere.

Peter Higgs

The model I came up with in 1964 is just the invention of a rather strange sort of medium that looks the same in all directions and produces a kind of refraction that is a little bit more complicated than that of light in glass or water.

Peter Higgs

My recollection of the higher school certificate, which involved a practical exam in physics, was being confronted with an experiment involving a sort of barometer arrangement, wondering why I couldn't make it work.

Peter Higgs