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British scientist Peter Higgs and Belgian scientist Francois Englert were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, announced Oct. 8.

The award recognizes the researchers' role in proposing the existence of a particle, now known as the Higgs Boson, which explains how the basic building blocks of our universe have mass. A third scientist, Robert Brout, also worked on the pathbreaking paper published in 1964. However, Brout died in 2011 and the Nobel Prize is not awarded posthumously.

Last year, researchers at U of T and around the world celebrated when scientists using the Large Hadron Collider at Cern found a particle that confirmed the theories. U of T physicists involved in the Higgs boson search include: Pekka Sinervo, Pierre Savard, Peter Krieger, Robert Orr, David Bailey, William Trischuk and Richard Teuscher (.)