Nobel Prize winner Higgs, 84, to retire next year

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Professor Peter Higgs, has said he plans to retire next year at the age of 85.

Prof Higgs also revealed in a BBC Scotland interview that he had turned down a knighthood in 1999. The 84-year-old was recognised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for his work on the theory of the particle which shares his name, the Higgs boson.

The existence of the so-called ‘God particle’, said to give matter its substance, or mass, was proved 50 years on by a team from the European nuclear research facility (Cern) in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012.