Belgian, British scientists share 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francois Englert from Belgium and British scientist Peter Higgs, announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm on Tuesday.

The prize were awarded to the two scientists "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," said Staffan Normark, permanent secretary of the academy.

"In 1964, they proposed the theory independently of each other (Englert together with his now deceased colleague Robert Brout). In 2012, their ideas were confirmed by the discovery of a so-called Higgs particle at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva in Switzerland," said a statement from the academy.

The awarded theory is a central part of the Standard Model of particle physics that describes how the world is constructed, it added.

"According to the Standard Model, everything, from flowers and people to stars and planets, consists of just a few building blocks: matter particles. These particles are governed by forces mediated by force particles that make sure everything works as it should," said the statement.

The announcement of the prize was delayed by one hour but Normark did not give any comment on the reason.

Higgs said he was "overwhelmed to receive this award."

"I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research," he said in a statement released by Edinburgh University.

This was the second of this year's crop of Nobel prizes, and each prize consists of a medal, a personal diploma and a cash award of 8 million Swedish kronor (about 1.2 million U.S. dollars).

On Monday, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine went to James E. Rothman, Randy W. Schekman and Thomas C. Sudhof.

The annual Nobel Prizes are usually announced in October and are handed out on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of Alfred Nobel, a Swedish industrialist and the inventor of dynamite.

All but one of the prizes were established in the will of 19th century dynamite millionaire Nobel. The economics award was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968.