François Englert, Nobel-prize-winning Belgian Physicist, Dies Aged 93

Key facts

• François Englert, a Belgian theoretical physicist who co-discovered the mechanism behind the Higgs boson, passed away on 18 June at the age of 93.
• He shared the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics with British physicist Peter Higgs for their theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to the understanding of the origin of mass in subatomic particles.
• His research, conducted with colleague Robert Brout at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), proposed that fundamental particles acquire mass by interacting with a field that permeates the universe.
• The predicted particle was confirmed in 2012 at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) as the Higgs boson with a mass of about 125 GeV, using the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
• Englert was ennobled as a baron by King Albert II of Belgium in 2013 and received other honours including the Francqui Prize, the Wolf Prize in Physics, and the American Physical Society (APS) J J Sakurai Prize.