François Englert

François Englert
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Name	François Englert
Caption	Englert at the 2013 Nobel Prize press conference in Stockholm
Birth date	6 November 1932
Birth place	Etterbeek, Brussels, Belgium
Nationality	Belgian
Fields	Theoretical physics
Workplaces	Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Tel Aviv University
Alma mater	Université libre de Bruxelles
Known for	Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism, Higgs boson
Awards	Wolf Prize in Physics (2004), Sakurai Prize (2010), Nobel Prize in Physics (2013), Prince of Asturias Award (2013)

François Englert is a distinguished Belgian theoretical physicist renowned for his pivotal contribution to the theory of elementary particle masses. He is best known for proposing, alongside the late Robert Brout, the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism, a cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics. This work, which also involved Peter Higgs and others, predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle whose discovery at CERN's Large Hadron Collider in 2012 led to Englert sharing the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Early life and education

Born in Etterbeek, a municipality of Brussels, he is a Holocaust survivor who spent part of World War II hidden in Belgian orphanages. After the war, he pursued his education in Brussels, developing an early interest in the sciences. He earned his PhD in physical sciences in 1959 from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), where he was influenced by the renowned physicist Julian Schwinger. His doctoral thesis focused on aspects of general relativity, setting the stage for his future work in fundamental physics.

Career and research

Following his PhD, Englert held a postdoctoral position at Cornell University, working with Robert Brout, beginning a lifelong collaborative partnership. He returned to Belgium to join the faculty at his alma mater, the Université libre de Bruxelles, where he became a professor and later a professor emeritus. He also held a joint professorship at Tel Aviv University in Israel for many years. His research has spanned quantum field theory, statistical mechanics, cosmology, and the study of supergravity and string theory. A central theme of his career has been the exploration of spontaneous symmetry breaking in gauge theory.

Higgs boson and Nobel Prize

In 1964, Englert and Brout published a groundbreaking paper in Physical Review Letters describing a mechanism for giving mass to gauge bosons while preserving the gauge invariance of the theory. Independently, Peter Higgs published a similar mechanism shortly thereafter, and the work was further developed by Gerald Guralnik, Carl Hagen, and Tom Kibble. This collective achievement became known as the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism. It is an essential component of the electroweak theory formulated by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg, and it implied the existence of a massive scalar particle, the Higgs boson. Nearly five decades later, experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN confirmed the particle's discovery. For this theoretical insight, Englert and Higgs were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013; Brout had died in 2011 and the prize is not awarded posthumously.

Awards and honors

Englert has received numerous prestigious awards for his contributions to physics. These include the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2004, which he shared with Brout and Higgs, and the J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics in 2010. Following the discovery at CERN, he was co-awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research in 2013. His Nobel Prize was one of the most anticipated in modern science. He is a member of several academies, including the French Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.

Personal life

Englert is married and has children. He maintains a deep connection to Belgium and the academic community at the Université libre de Bruxelles. Despite his global fame following the Nobel Prize, he is known for his modesty and continued intellectual curiosity. His life story, from surviving the Holocaust to reaching the pinnacle of scientific recognition, is a testament to resilience and the pursuit of fundamental knowledge.

Category:Belgian theoretical physicists Category:Nobel Prize in Physics laureates Category:Holocaust survivors Category:Wolf Prize in Physics laureates Category:1932 births Category:Living people