Elusive

Author Frank Close
Narrator Richard Burnip
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Run Time 10 hours and 56 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Atomic and molecular physics, Biography: science, technology and medicine, European history, History of science, Nuclear physics, Particle and high-energy physics.

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In the summer of 1964, a reclusive young professor at the University of Edinburgh wrote two scientific papers which have come to change our understanding of the most fundamental building blocks of matter and the nature of the universe. Peter Higgs posited the existence an almost infinitely tiny particle - today known as the Higgs boson - which is the key to understanding why particles have mass, and but for which atoms and molecules could not exist.

For nearly 50 years afterwards, some of the largest projects in experimental physics sought to demonstrate the physical existence of the boson which Higgs had proposed. Sensationally, confirmation came in July 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva. The following year Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. One of the least-known giants of science, he is the only person in history to have had a single particle named for them.

This revelatory book is 'not so much a biography of the man but of the boson named after him'. It brilliantly traces the course of much of twentieth-century physics from the inception of quantum field theory to the completion of the 'standard model' of particles and forces, and the pivotal role of Higgs's idea in this evolution. It also investigates the contested history of Higgs's responsibility for the breakthrough when there were others close by, and explains why the boson is named for him alone. Competition between institutions and states, Close shows, then played as much of a role in creating Higgs's fame as his work itself. Drawing on conversations with Higgs over a decade (a figure generally as elusive as his particle) this is a superb study of a scientist and his era - and of how scientific knowledge advances.

© Frank Close 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

thorough and fascinating … Close spoke at length to Higgs and the result is a highly detailed and rich narrative … a piece of scientific history.
Spectator
An illuminating guide to the man and the science behind the Higgs boson … the tale of the conception and discovery of the Higgs boson, a tiny tremor in an energy field that pervades the whole universe, is one of the most important in modern physics. Without the Higgs there would be no atoms or people or planets or stars or anything except restless particles zipping through space in splendid isolation. Close, a particle physicist who has served as head of communications and public education at Cern, is an excellent guide to the knotty science of that story, as well as what we do know about the mysterious man himself.
Guardian
a clear, vivid and occasionally even beautiful portrait of a scientific breakthrough: the tale of how a relatively obscure Scotland-based physicist developed a stunning theory, one that would help illuminate the invisible, particulate web that holds our universe together
New York Times
a five star book – it reaches parts other books on the Higgs have failed to reach and Frank Close does a brilliant job
Popular Science
A fascinating biography of an elusive particle and the equally elusive man who predicted its existence half a century before it was found. If the Higgs boson is the God particle then I feel I have glimpsed the mind of its creator.
Jim Al-Khalili
Close tells the intertwined stories of Higgs’s life and the discovery of the Higgs boson with the aid of a deep understanding of the physics involved and the benefit of many meetings with Higgs himself. There have been other books on the same theme, but this is far and away the best. Where Close excels is in explaining the fundamental principles of particle physics in language anyone likely to pick up this book will understand. … Elusive works as a biography of Peter Higgs, as an account of one of the greatest intellectual advances in human history and, best of all, as an answer to anyone who asks why we should bother to carry out experiments like those performed at CERN. Buy it.
Literary Review
Close is among today’s best writers on the history of quantum mechanics
Economist
Particular brilliance … This accessible account tells the story of the quest, and of the man who made it possible
BBC History Magazine
reveals the sheer complexity, detail and dazzling precision that, for the scientist, constitutes ‘beauty in nature’. Close maintains a strong narrative line – we are watching and waiting throughout for the Higgs boson to be identified.
Mail on Sunday
A perfect marriage of subject and writer. With verve, insight, and rigor, Frank Close beautifully illuminates the life and times of one of physics’ great, unheralded giants. Elusive is a triumph of a book, and one worthy of its subject’s extraordinary contributions.
Jimmy Soni
Elusive is both a deep, exciting intellectual history and an elegantly told portrait of a quiet man whose ‘one great idea’ changed modern physics forever. Close marries the exotic details of contemporary particle physics theory with the very human aspects of how that theory came to be. An enlightening read from one of our very best writers and practitioners of physics.
David N. Schwartz
Rich, compelling, and surprising. Fundamental physics can be equal parts awe-inspiring and head-spinning, and Close masterfully captures those qualities in this deeply satisfying tale of Peter Higgs’s convoluted, and very human, journey through life and science.
Caleb Scharf
beautifully, engagingly written … I was reassured by the characteristic wisdom and honesty of Close’s judgement that, while the discovery of the Higgs particle completes the Standard Model of the atom, “Internal completeness is a mathematical requirement, whereas describing the world around us is the demand of natural philosophy”. That sentence alone makes Elusive my book of the year.
Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year
Frank Close is probably the perfect person to tell the tale of Higgs and his boson. A serious physicist himself, he is also an exceptional author – and, unlike with most authors, his subject actually occasionally speaks to him.
Times Books of the Year
the first full biography of Higgs … focuses just as much on Higgs the particle as he does on Higgs the scientist, and the physics concepts he explores can be daunting. But this excellent book is well worth the effort.
Symmetry Books of the Year
A compelling account of the long search for the Higgs boson
Economist
Because there would be no atoms or molecules without the intervention of the Higgs field, our very existence is a consequence of its reality … a compulsive read. Besides explaining the physics and exploring the many personalities involved, it also conveys the excitement of physics research, the missed opportunities, the happy coincidences, the false trails, the social networks, the collaborations and professional rivalries. Like an established scientific fact that will stand for all time, this book is a definitive account of an historic scientific achievement.
Physics Education

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