Among the names read out was Prof Peter Higgs, the British theorist who, nearly half a century earlier, had predicted the existence of a particle believed to hold the cosmos together – the Higgs boson.
The announcement, broadcast live from Sweden, was what many scientists had hoped for since a year earlier, when experiments at CERN had finally confirmed Higgs's theory by discovering the Higgs boson – hailed as one of the biggest discoveries in a generation.
At the time Higgs, who has since passed away, said in a statement: "I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research."
Blue-sky research asks questions to understand the universe, rather than design new products. It is what British science excels at, leading to the discovery of the electron, the structure of DNA and the development of the first computer. All of them were without any practical application when they were developed or discovered, but each of them has since formed the basis of technologies that created multi-billion pound industries and transformed our world.
