Political and Religious Views
Higgs was an activist in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) while in London and later in Edinburgh, but resigned his membership when the group extended its remit from campaigning against nuclear weapons to campaigning against nuclear power too. He was a Greenpeace member until the group opposed genetically modified organisms.
Higgs was awarded the 2004 Wolf Prize in Physics (sharing it with Brout and Englert), but he refused to fly to Jerusalem to receive the award because it was a state occasion attended by the then president of Israel, Moshe Katsav, and Higgs is opposed to Israel's actions in Palestine.
Higgs is an atheist, and is displeased that the Higgs particle is nicknamed the "God particle", as he believes the term "might offend people who are religious". Usually this nickname for the Higgs boson is attributed to Leon Lederman, the author of the book The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What Is the Question?, but the name is the result of the insistence of Lederman's publisher: Lederman had originally intended to refer to it as the "goddamn particle".
Read more about this topic: Peter Higgs
Famous quotes containing the words political, religious and/or views:
“Almost all scholarly research carries practical and political implications. Better that we should spell these out ourselves than leave that task to people with a vested interest in stressing only some of the implications and falsifying others. The idea that academics should remain “above the fray” only gives ideologues license to misuse our work.”
—Stephanie Coontz (b. 1944)
“The English are probably the most tolerant, least religious people on earth.”
—David Goldberg (b. 1939)
“But of all the views of this law [universal education] none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)