The recluse who confronted the mystery of the universe

This is a very human telling of the ways that we've figured out at least some of the mysteries of our universe since the mid-20th century

In early October 2013, the Nobel Prize committee was preparing to announce the winner of its award in physics. The leading candidate — as pretty much everyone knew — was an 84-year-old Scottish scientist named Peter Higgs, who was not feeling nearly as joyful as you might think. Yes, he wanted to win the award, yes, he wanted to be recognised for his pioneering insights into how subatomic particles build our universe. He just wanted to be recognised for it quietly.

But as a theorist already heralded for his 1964 work predicting the Higgs boson (sometimes called the God particle),