a group of physicists from texas a&m university are basking in the worldwide glow of big science based on their critical supporting role along with thousands of scientists across the globe in the 2013 nobel prize in physics awarded today (oct 8) by the royal swedish academy of sciences to theorists peter higgs and francois englert to recognize their work developing the theory of what is now known as the higgs field credited for giving elementary particles mass higgs and englert specifically were cited 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 cerns large hadron collider the cms detector at the large hadron collider at cern (credit: fermilab) participants in a recent meeting co-hosted by the texas a&m mitchell institute of researchers from the us institutions in cms dedicated to developing a strategy for the forward muon detector upgrades necessary to withstand the high-beam intensity regime as the lhc converts to a veritable higgs factory during the coming decade us scientists including more than 30 from texas a&ms george p and cynthia woods mitchell institute for fundamental physics and astronomy involved in the cms experiment played a significant role in advancing the theory and in discovering the particle that proves the existence of the higgs field the higgs boson in the 1960s higgs and englert along with other theorists (including robert brout tom kibble and americans carl hagen and gerald guralnik) published papers introducing key concepts in the theory of the higgs field in 2012 scientists on the international atlas and cms experiments performed at the large hadron collider at cern laboratory in europe confirmed this theory when they announced the discovery of the higgs boson texas a&m joins the rest of the world in congratulating our theory colleagues peter higgs and francois englert said alexei safonov an associate professor in the department of physics and astronomy and a cms collaboration member we are very happy that their achievement has been recognized with the highest prize in physics and we likewise congratulate all our colleagues in theory and in the two experiments who have been part of the discovery including our own researchers and students nearly 2 000 physicists from us institutions including 88 universities besides texas a&m and seven us department of energy laboratories participate in the atlas and cms experiments making up about 23 percent of the atlas collaboration and 33 percent of cms at the time of the higgs discovery brookhaven national laboratory serves as the us hub for the atlas experiment and fermi national accelerator laboratory serves as the us hub for the cms experiment us scientists provided a significant portion of the intellectual leadership on higgs analysis teams for both experiments safonov is joined by experimental physicists teruki kamon ricardo eusebi and david toback in representing texas a&m in the cms collaboration along with fellow texas a&m experimental physicist peter mcintyre who helped conceive the original idea for fermilabs tevatron along with theoretical physicists dimitri nanopoulos bhaskar dutta and richard arnowitt for more information on the nobel prize please see fermilabs official press release or visit their background page find additional background on the higgs discovery and texas a&ms involvement click here to see images of the higgs event detected at the cms detector created using a new software developed by texas a&m postdoctoral student tai sakuma to learn more about the cms collaboration visit the texas a&m collider physics website at http://colliderphysicstamuedu watch a video that explains americas vital contributions to the higgs discovery on youtube: -atm- contact: shana k hutchins (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@sciencetamuedu or dr alexei n safonov at (630) 650-2078 or safonov@tamuedu