François Englert facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
François Englert
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François Englert, 2007
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| Born | 6 November 1932 |
| Alma mater | Free University of Brussels |
| Known for | Higgs mechanism Higgs boson Spontaneous symmetry breaking |
| Awards | Francqui Prize (1982) Wolf Prize in Physics (2004) Sakurai Prize (2010) Nobel Prize in Physics (2013) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Theoretical physics |
| Institutions | Université libre de Bruxelles Tel Aviv University |
François, Baron Englert (born 6 November 1932) is a famous Belgian theoretical physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013.
Englert is a professor emeritus at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in Belgium. He also works at Tel Aviv University in Israel and Chapman University in California. He has received many important awards for his work. These include the Sakurai Prize in 2010, the Wolf Prize in Physics in 2004, and the European Physical Society's High Energy and Particle Prize in 1997. These awards recognized his work on a special mechanism that helps us understand how particles get mass.
Englert has made big contributions to many areas of physics. These include statistical physics, quantum field theory, cosmology, and string theory. In 2013, he shared the Prince of Asturias Award with Peter Higgs and CERN. Later that year, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Peter Higgs. They were honored for discovering the Brout–Englert–Higgs mechanism. This mechanism helps explain how tiny particles get their mass.
Contents
Early Life and Challenges
François Englert was born into a Jewish family in Belgium. During World War II, when Germany occupied Belgium, he faced great danger. He had to hide his Jewish identity to stay safe. He lived in different orphanages and children's homes. These places were in towns like Dinant and Stoumont. The US Army eventually freed these towns.
Academic Journey and Discoveries
Englert finished his engineering degree in 1955 at the Free University of Brussels. He then earned his PhD in physical sciences in 1959. From 1959 to 1961, he worked at Cornell University in the United States. He returned to the ULB, where he became a university professor. His colleague, Robert Brout, joined him there. Together, they led the theoretical physics group. Englert became a professor emeritus in 1998, meaning he retired but kept his title.
In 1984, he started working as a special professor at Tel-Aviv University. In 2011, Englert also joined Chapman University's Institute for Quantum Studies.
The Higgs Mechanism Explained
In 1964, Englert and Robert Brout made a huge discovery. They showed that certain force-carrying particles, called gauge vector fields, could gain mass. This happens if empty space has a special structure. Think of it like a magnet. A magnet has tiny magnets inside that line up. This lining up creates a structure. Similarly, empty space can have a structure that affects particles.
Later that same year, Peter Higgs reached a similar conclusion. A third paper was written by Gerald Guralnik, C. R. Hagen, and T. W. B. Kibble. All three papers were recognized as very important for this discovery.
Particles that are affected by this "empty space structure" can only travel a short distance. This means they have mass and create short-range forces. Particles not affected travel freely, remaining massless and creating long-range forces. This idea helped combine short and long-range forces into one theory.
Englert, Brout, Higgs, Guralnik, Hagen, and Kibble suggested that a special field, often called the Higgs field, creates this structure. Many physicists believe this field gives fundamental particles their mass. Englert and Brout also thought their theory could be "renormalizable." This means it could make sense even with very small particles. Later, Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman proved this, winning a Nobel Prize in 1999.
The Brout–Englert–Higgs–Guralnik–Hagen–Kibble mechanism is a key part of the electroweak theory. This theory helps us understand how elementary particles work. It also laid the foundation for a unified view of nature's basic laws.
Major Awards and Honors
- 1978: First Prize in the International Gravity Contest (with R. Brout and E. Gunzig).
- 1982: Francqui Prize. This award recognized his work on how particles get mass.
- 1997: High Energy and Particle Physics Prize (with R. Brout and P.W. Higgs). They were honored for creating a theory about massive force-carrying particles.
- 2004: Wolf Prize in Physics (with R. Brout and P.W. Higgs). This award was for their pioneering work on how mass is generated in sub-atomic particles.
- 2010: J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics (with Guralnik, Hagen, Kibble, Higgs, and Brout). This prize was for explaining how particles get mass through spontaneous symmetry breaking.
- 2013: King Albert II of Belgium made François Englert a baron. This is a special honor.
- 2013: Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Peter Higgs. They won for predicting a mechanism that explains the origin of mass for subatomic particles. This prediction was later confirmed by experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
- 2013: Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (with Peter Higgs and CERN). This was for predicting and then finding the Higgs boson.
See also
In Spanish: François Englert para niños
- List of Jewish Nobel laureates
