Higgs@10 - Alumni Memories with John Jowett
What memories do you have from the 4 July 2012 announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson?
“I could say a lot but briefly: I had the privilege of being a student of Peter Higgs at Edinburgh University in the 1970s and my wife and I have remained close friends with him. He had his own insights into physics which were ahead of their time. I learned a lot from him.
When he and his colleague Alan Walker arrived at CERN on 3 July 2012, they contacted us and we spent time with them that day. For me, it was about 35 years since I had first studied the BEH mechanism, while for him of course it was almost 50 years since he had proposed it. It is very hard to describe the intensity of the anticipation everyone felt that day.
Later we were his personal guests for the Nobel Prize Week in December 2013. These and other events in 2012-13 were major highlights of my life."
What is your best memory of working at CERN?
"Very difficult to choose among many wonderful moments with LEP and the LHC but, for me personally: Colliding protons with lead nuclei in the LHC for the first time in September 2012. Also, the first collisions at the Z energy with LEP, dumping the last beam at the end of Run 2. The photos uploaded are in the LHC control room: the first proton-lead collisions (4 people) and just before we dumped the last beam of Run 2 on 3 Dec 2018 (which happened to be my birthday). I have many more. "
