St Andrews honours father of the Higgs Boson particle

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Professor Peter Higgs, who predicted the existence of a sub-atomic particle which gives mass to all the matter in the universe, will be awarded an honorary degree by Scotland’s first University next month.

The Higgs Boson particle is a crucial ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics, without which the theory that combines all the fundamental forces and particles of the universe would have fallen down.

Professor Higgs will be awarded his DSc at a graduation ceremony on Wednesday June 25, 2014 at the University of St Andrews. The BBC’s Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet, conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and director of The National Gallery in London Dr Nicholas Penny, will also be among the names being honoured during this year’s summer graduations.

The full honours list is as follows: Professor Sarah Coakley (Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge, Philosophical and Systematic Theologian), Professor Tim Shaw (Professor & PhD Director, Global Governance & Human Security, University of Massachusetts Boston;  Professor Emeritus, University of London), Professor Christina Romer (Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley; Former Chair, President’s Council of Economic Advisers), Dr Nicholas Penny (Director, The National Gallery, London), Professor Dana Scott (Emeritus University Professor of Mathematical Logic, Computer Science and Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University), Professor Peter Higgs (Physicist, Nobel Laureate), Professor Peter Brown (Emeritus Professor of history, Princeton University), Sir John Eliot Gardiner (Conductor), Professor Gayatri Spivak (University Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University), Professor Silvia Gherardi (Senior Professor of Sociology of Work and Organisation, University of Trento), Professor Dusa McDuff (Professor of Mathematics, Barnard College, Columbia University), Professor Bernard Silverman (Chief Scientific Adviser, Home Office), and Lyse Doucet (BBC Chief International Correspondent and an occasional Contributing Editor).

The thirteen recipients will be honoured over eight ceremonies to be held at the Younger Hall from Tuesday 24 – Friday 27 June.

Further information on media arrangements for each ceremony will be released nearer the time.