Lot 67•
HIGGS (PROFESSOR PETER) The remaining scientific library of Nobel Prize-winner Professor Peter Higgs, comprising upwards 280 volumes, mostly with HIGGS' OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTION, 1937-2000s (collection)
Ending from 19 November 2025, 12:00 GMT
Online, London, Knightsbridge£15,000 - £25,000
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HIGGS (PROFESSOR PETER)
The remaining scientific library of Nobel Prize-winner Professor Peter Higgs, comprising upwards 280 volumes, mostly with HIGGS' OWNERSHIP INSCRIPTION, from 1930s (one, Jenkins/White. Fundamentals of Physical Optics, 1937), 1940s (c.37, some with address as "Faculty of Science, Kings College, London"), 1950s (c.90), 1960s (c.25), 1970s and later (c.115), publishers' cloth or wrappers, 8vo and 4to, 1937-2000s (collection)
Footnotes
THE REMAINING SCIENTIFIC LIBRARY OF NOBEL PRIZE-WINNER PROFESSOR PETER HIGGS, the theoretical physicist whose studies into the underlying structure of atoms resulted in the discovery of the eponymous "Higgs boson", also known as the "God particle". His Nobel Prize for Physics in 2013 was "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider" (Nobel Prize website).
The books encompass Higgs' scientific reading material from the 1940s when he studied physics at Kings College, London, research fellowship at University College and Imperial College in the 1950s, and the University of Edinburgh where, following his appointment to the post of Lecturer at the Tait Institute of Mathematical Physics, he spent the remainder of his career.
Includes works by Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, Max Born, Edwin Kemble, D.E. Rutherford, Richard C. Tolman, E.M. Corson, Enrico Fermi, and many others on quantum mechanics, mathematical and nuclear physics, string theory, thermo-dynamics, algebraic mathematics, etc.
Provenance: Estate of Peter Ware Higgs (1929-2024).