Belgian Nobel Winner Francois Englert Dies at 93

A famous Belgian scientist died on a Thursday in Uccle. His name was Francois Englert and he was ninety-three. He won a Nobel Prize in 2013 because of physics.

Englert studied civil engineering at a university first. After that, he got a doctorate in theoretical physics. He worked at Cornell University in the United States. He met Robert Brout there and they became friends. Later, Brout went to Belgium with his colleague. They ran a department at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles.

In 1964, Englert and Brout proposed a new theory. Peter Higgs was a British scientist at that time. He independently had the same idea as Brout and Englert. They studied very small particles in our universe. They wanted to understand how objects get mass. This mass makes all physical objects in our world heavy. They believed in a special field across the universe. Particles interact with this field and they get mass.

In 2012, researchers tested this theory at a laboratory. This famous Swiss laboratory has the name CERN. They used the ATLAS and CMS experiments for this. They successfully discovered the Higgs boson particle there. Sadly, Robert Brout died before this discovery happened. Englert and Peter Higgs won the Nobel Prize in 2013. Peter Higgs later died in the year 2024.

His life began on November 6, 1932, in Brussels. His parents were Jewish shopkeepers in the city. During World War II, Germany occupied the country of Belgium. The young boy lived in hiding with his family. Fortunately, they survived the war together in safety. Englert became a nonconformist and did not believe in religion. He wanted a rational understanding of the universe.