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Peter Higgs( b.1929), British theoretical physicist, in front of a portrait of himself at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. In 1964, Higgs predicted the existence of a new type of fundamental particle, called the Higgs boson, that is thought to give other particles mass. This particle is required by many of the Grand Unified Theories (or GUTs) which hope to explain three of the fundamental forces (electromagnetism and the weak and the strong nuclear forces) in a single unified theory. The Higgs boson is yet to be detected experimentally, but it is one of the main challenges of high-energy particle accelerators such as the large hadron collider (LHC) at CERN (the European particle physics laboratory). (KEYSTONE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/PETER TUFFY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY)