François Englert
active c. 1932, Etterbeek, Belgium
Belgian theoretical physicist who, with Robert Brout, proposed the Brout–Englert–Higgs mass-generation mechanism.
Englert and his Brussels colleague Robert Brout published on 26 June 1964 the first paper explaining how gauge bosons acquire mass via spontaneous symmetry breaking — weeks before Higgs's paper. Brout died in 2011, so only Englert and Higgs shared the 2013 Nobel. Englert later worked on cosmology and string theory.
Nobel-winning work
The Brout–Englert paper (1964) showed that in gauge theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking, a scalar field acquiring a nonzero vacuum value gives mass to force-carrying bosons — along with an observable scalar boson. Half a century later that boson was found at the LHC (2012), closing particle physics' longest-standing prediction.
Workplaces: Université Libre de Bruxelles
Belgium