The leaders of the massive international research project which found evidence of the existence of the Higgs Boson have been presented with a major prize.

Seven physicists from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva will share the $3m Fundamental Physics Prize, bankrolled by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner.

Among the seven are Fabiola Gianotti and Peter Jenni, who serve(d) as spokespersons for the 3,000 researchers responsible for the design, building and operation of CERN’s ATLAS detector.

Particle physicists from the University of Glasgow were involved for more than two decades in the development of the semiconductor tracking systems used in ATLAS. The prize comes at the end of a successful year for funding where the University’s Particle Physics Experiment (PPE) research group consolidated grant award from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) was £3,942,430 (£4,854,213, fEC).

Professor Tony Doyle, PPE research group leader, said: “Fabiola is quite an inspiration during the current LHC exploitation phase. Peter led the collaboration for many years during the ATLAS detector development phase. The shared prize, reflecting two major eras in the development of ATLAS, is very well-deserved. We’re proud to have played an important role in the development of ATLAS and the growing evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson.”

Dr Craig Buttar, leading the PPE group’s ATLAS activities, said: “"Both Peter and Fabiola have shown great leadership bringing together a large collaboration of 3000 scientists to build ATLAS and to use it to discover the Higgs boson.
The award recognises their inspirational leadership and the work of the collaboration as whole in making this momentous scientific discovery.

We’re already working with partners in other universities worldwide to develop the next generation of ATLAS technology at the new GLADD lab in the Kelvin Building, which opened last month.”

Drs Gianotti and Jenni intend to use their $1m prize money to provide support for young researchers who might otherwise be prevented from working at CERN by economic hardship.

A second $3m Fundamental Physics Prize was also presented to Stephen Hawking for his contributions to physics, cosmology and public understanding of science. 

First published: 20 December 2012

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