The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is celebrating Time magazine’s naming of its ATLAS spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti as runner-up for 2012 Person of the Year (an honor bestowed on US President Barack Obama) for her leading role in the endeavor to discover the Higgs-like boson. Shown is a mock cover from Time magazine’s website featuring Dr. Gianotti.
In an in-depth piece on her career and background, Time senior science editor Jeffrey Kluger praised Gianotti for her leadership in managing the 3,000 people who make up the ATLAS collaboration. “It’s not only a great scientific endeavor but a unique human adventure,” Gianotti told Time. “Working with so many people from all over the world is extremely enriching and stimulating.”
The boson itself made Particle of the Year: Though it raised a few eyebrows when the Higgs-like particle made the list of nominees for Person of the Year, Kluger deftly argued that the boson should at least be Particle of the Year. “Unless the Higgs could be found,” he said, “[The Standard Model], one of the great edifices of physics, could come tumbling down.”
Another honor for the Higgs Boson comes from Science, which has chosen the finding of the particle as the Breakthrough of the Year. As it says, “No recent scientific advance has generated more hoopla than this one…Yet, for all the hype, the discovery of the Higgs boson easily merits recognition as the breakthrough of the year. Hypothesized more than 40 years ago, the Higgs boson is the key to physicists’ explanation of how other fundamental particles get their mass. Its observation completes the standard model, perhaps the most elaborate and precise theory in all of science. In fact, the only big question hanging over the advance is whether it marks the beginning of a new age of discovery in particle physics or the last hurrah for a field that has run its course.”
