Robert Hofstadter Memorial Lecture: “The Higgs Boson and Our Life”

April 5, 2013

Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, Senior Research Scientist at CERN and spokesperson for the ATLAS experiment, will give a lecture entitled “The Higgs Boson and Our Life.”  Abstract:  On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments operating at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the discovery of a new particle compatible with the Higgs boson (hunted for almost 50 years), which is a crucial piece for our understanding of fundamental physics and thus the structure and evolution of the universe.  This lecture describes the unprecedented instruments and challenges that have allowed such an accomplishment, the physics meaning and relevance of this discovery, and the implications for our day to day life.