THEORETICAL physicist Peter Higgs has been honoured by the city which he has called home for more than half a century.
Professor Higgs, 82, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Edinburgh University, was presented with the Edinburgh Award 2011 at a ceremony at the City Chambers last night.
The Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented him with an engraved Loving Cup – a traditional two-handled drinking vessel which represents friendship.
Mr Higgs, after whom the Higgs boson particle is named, is the fifth person to receive the award which recognises an outstanding contribution to the city.
He said: "It is a great honour to receive this award from the city I fell in love with and is now my home."
His work in the 1960s proposed the existence of a particle which came to be known as the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle.
It is an important component of the Standard Model of particle physics that helps explain how objects have mass.
The award comes after an announcement in December from scientists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) that two independent experiments at the Large Hadron Collider had seen "tantalising hints" of the existence of the Higgs boson.
Asked what it would mean to him if scientists at Cern were to discover it, Mr Higgs said: "I will probably go and open a bottle of Champagne to celebrate. It will certainly have an impact on my life I think."
A sculpture of his handprints was unveiled yesterday in the City Chambers quadrangle.
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