Frank Close, "Elusive: How Peter Higgs Solved the Mystery of Mass" (Basic Book, 2022)
New Books in Science, Technology, and Society
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Higgs's 'Gain in Variance'
During the mid fifties and when he moved to edinburgh n ineteen 60, his interest had actually been in gravity in general. He became fascinated by a particular piece of mathematical detail called gauge in variance. It's a piece of math that is very critical when you're dealing with generalrelativity. And so we were trying to understand, for they were understand the strong force that binds the nucleus. So that is what higgs said about generlativity. But among the various ideas, there was one that looked very promising - but it hit a brick wall. Nobody could get through this problem.
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