François Englert

Facts

François Englert

© Nobel Media AB. Photo: A. Mahmoud

François Englert
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013

Born: 6 November 1932, Etterbeek, Belgium

Affiliation at the time of the award: Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium

Prize motivation: “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”

Prize share: 1/2

Life

François Englert was born in Etterbeek, Belgium. His family was of Jewish origin and during the German occupation of Belgium during World War II, Englert concealed his Jewish roots and hid at different orphanages. He was first educated as an electrical-mechanical engineer and later received his Ph.D. in physics in 1959 from the Université Libre de Bruxelles. After spending two years at Cornell University in the U.S., Englert returned to Université Libre de Bruxelles, where he has continued his work. François Englert is married with five children.

Work

According to modern physics, matter consists of a set of particles that act as building blocks. Between these particles lie forces that are mediated by another set of particles. A fundamental property of the majority of particles is that they have a mass. Independently of one another, in 1964 both Peter Higgs and the team of François Englert and Robert Brout proposed a theory about the existence of a particle that explains why other particles have a mass. In 2012, two experiments conducted at the CERN laboratory confirmed the existence of the Higgs particle.

To cite this section
MLA style: François Englert – Facts. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2024. Fri. 22 Nov 2024. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/englert/facts/>

Back to top Back To Top Takes users back to the top of the page

Nobel Prizes and laureates

Six prizes were awarded for achievements that have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. The 12 laureates' work and discoveries range from proteins' structures and machine learning to fighting for a world free of nuclear weapons.

See them all presented here.

Illustration

Explore prizes and laureates

Look for popular awards and laureates in different fields, and discover the history of the Nobel Prize.