Brookhaven Lab "Higgs Hunter" Receives Humboldt Research Award

July 15, 2015

Sally Dawson, BNL theoretical physicist

The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn, Germany, grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards each year to researchers whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.

Sally Dawson, a theoretical physicist at Brookhaven Lab, was recently selected to receive the prestigious Humboldt Research Award for her life’s work, which includes research on the long-sought Higgs boson and precise calculations of the particle’s properties.

Dawson has been on the Higgs’ trail for decades, developing mathematical models to explain and predict the processes in which Higgs particles are produced. The Higgs is a subatomic particle thought to give mass to other elementary particles in the Standard Model of particle physics – the theory that describes all known fundamental particles and explains how they interact. Since 1974, 12 other Brookhaven physicists have received the Humboldt prize.

To learn more visit: www.bnl.gov/newsroom/news.php?a=11735

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