The theoretical physicist Peter Higgs is known for the particle named after him – the Higgs boson. Higgs’s research at the University of Edinburgh in the 1960s contributed to the theory which proposed that, in the aftermath of the Big Bang, particles acquired mass through interaction with a field permeating space. In very high-energy particle collisions, the energy of this field should be released in the form of new particles known as Higgs bosons. The discovery of the existence of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva in 2012 has consequently changed our understanding of physics. In 2013 Higgs jointly won the Nobel Prize for Physics for this research. The artist has mixed sand with paint to represent “particles whirling round in space”.