Higgs boson breakthrough was UK triumph, but British physics faces 'catastrophic' cuts

Higgs boson breakthrough was UK triumph, but British physics faces 'catastrophic' cuts18 March 2026ShareSaveAdd as preferred on GooglePallab GhoshScience CorrespondentBBCWhen the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced in Stockholm in October 2013, the world was watching.Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together – the Higgs boson.The announcement, broadcast live from Sweden, was what many scientists had hoped for since a year earlier, when experiments at CERN had finally confirmed Higgs's theory by discovering the Higgs boson – hailed as one of the biggest discoveries in a generation.At the time Higgs, who died in 2024, said in a statement: "I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."Blue-sky research asks questions to understand the universe, rather than design new products. It is what British science excels at, leading to the discovery of the electron, the structure of DNA and the development of the first computer. All of them were without any practical application when they were developed or discovered, but each of them has since formed the basis of technologies that created multi-billion pound industries and transformed our world.Getty ImagesPeter Higgs was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics with Francois Englert in 2013But now, Britain is preparing to cancel its contribution to one of the Large Hadron Collider's next major upgrades. It is one of several proposed cuts of UK involvement across various major particle physics and astronomy projects, which could see Britain's scientists reduce or even end their involvement in the most exciting international research collaborations probing the nature of our Universe.For some, it is as if Higgs's words, celebrated back in 2013, were never uttered.Behind the story is a row...