HIGGS FORCE
by Nicholas Mee

www.nicholasmee.com

Nick, I have been reading your book. It is hard to put down. I am impressed with the quality of the work. I am retired but return to teaching astronomy and physics from time to time. I am going to recommend your books to all of my students.
Thanks for a very worthwhile scientific experience.
Chuck Ivie

For someone like myself, with an interest in science, this book was a great way to get behind the “what” and learn about the “who” and the “how” of particle physics.
The early parts of the book give a fascinating journey through the various discoveries (from the earliest discoveries of elements, electricity and electromagnetism), and the people who made them, leading up to our modern views of the physics behind the way the world works.
The last section of the book talks about the truly gargantuan engineering that has gone into the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which is probably the biggest piece of scientific apparatus the world has ever seen.
At the end of the book, I was left with a sense of how each discovery is built on the brilliance not just of the discoverer, but on how much each depended on other earlier discoveries.
The book is never dull, and I’d strongly recommend it to anyone with an interest in physics and a basic background in science. There is no complex maths in the book - the hardest thing is getting your head around the truly weird stuff that goes on inside “stuff”.
Congratulations on a great piece of work!
Wolfster
Amazon Kindle Review

Read your book and what a superb read it is!
Chris Critchley
College Lecturer

Thank You. I just wanted you to know that I purchased your book on the amazon Kindle Fire and just completed reading it. Your book was perfect for someone like myself, who has a tiny bit of understanding, a modicum of the required mathematics that is required to truly understand how the world outside of our senses can be explained, and has now gained a fuller appreciation of the very hard work and dedication that was required to bring us to this point.
Philip Trask
Engineer

I enjoyed the book tremendously!
It filled in some significant gaps in my knowledge too. Who says learning can’t be fun!
Stuart Wood
Fractal Ariel Designer

I started to read it on Amazon. I thought it would be written at too high a level for me
(it is in a way) ... but it's so captivating. People will love to read it ...
You should do a lecture/signature at Siggraph next summer.
Veronique Gode
Journalist - Digital Arts International

As a non-scientist, my needs from a popular science book are demanding to say the least. I need clarity; creativity to keep me reading; a welcoming tone that neither patronises nor baffles; and a healthy dose of mystery to inspire my curiosity. I got all this and more from ‘HIGGS FORCE’. Nick brilliantly takes the reader by the hand to meet the scientists whose genius (and some might say insanity) revealed the inner workings of the natural world. As a reader, I am not easy to enthral and if a book cannot grip my imagination within the first few pages I ‘switch off’. I suffered no such disappointment with this work - I was enchanted from start to finish!
Juliet Smith
Severn Publishing Services

“HIGGS FORCE” takes a new approach to contemporary physics, and makes notoriously difficult material accessible and approachable. The book is very readable and entertaining, and I will certainly recommend it to my first year undergraduates, to whom it will greatly appeal. I have found it hard to find a suitable book on these topics to support my teaching, and this one is ideal. It will certainly change the way I deliver my “quantum mechanics in one morning” lesson next term!
Tony Mann
President of the British Society for the History of Mathematics
Head of Mathematical Sciences – Greenwich University

Having always been interested in science, I found the book fascinating and very informative. When I was reading it I couldn’t wait for the next chapter to arrive. Questions about the fundamental forces that build up the universe were answered in depth, difficult concepts skilfully built up without the use of complicated mathematics. The electromagnetic, strong and weak forces are explained in an extremely clear and concise manner. Any difficulties and misconceptions that cropped up in my head after reading a more challenging passage, were addressed immediately in the following paragraphs.
I particularly enjoyed how the historical and biographical details gave an engaging insight into the lives of the scientists and their discoveries. The level was set just right for me and left me wanting more. I have put what I have learnt to good use, I feel much more confident teaching atomic structure and forces in GCSE physics. I would enthusiastically recommend this book to anyone interested in the fundamental forces of the universe.
Debra Nightingale
Biology Teacher

Nick Mee offers an enthralling introduction to the fundamental particles that make up the universe by taking the non-specialist reader on a voyage into the atom to examine known particles such as quarks, electrons, and the neutrino. Along the way he advances fascinating insights into how discoveries in particle physics have been made, and discusses how our picture of the world has been revised in the light of these developments. He concludes by looking to contemporary ideas about the mystery of the Higgs Boson, research at the Large Hadron Collider and what this might reveal, and as a consequence its implications for our place in the universe.
Barry Phipps
Interdisciplinary Fellow at Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge
Fellow of Churchill College

‘Higgs Force’, by Nicholas Mee, takes the reader on a fascinating intellectual journey: our endeavours to uncover and understand the laws governing the universe, with particular emphasis on the beautiful ideas arising from symmetry. This is a remarkable story, and it is told here with lucidity and verve. Theoretical Physics has never been short of singular characters, and some fascinating biographical accounts appear, along with vivid and entertaining historical and cultural references, from the game of Go, to a spectral encounter in highland mists, to the son of a midwestern rancher turned physicist and sculptor. For an interested general reader, this book will provide an excellent introduction to ideas which have transformed our lives and which lead on to truly front-line research. With data from the LHC just beginning to emerge, we may be tantalisingly close to finishing the latest chapter in the story, by finding the long-awaited Higgs particle, and in this sense the book could not be more timely.
Jonathan Evans
University Lecturer
Dept of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

Nicholas Mee’s book is a dinner party with physicists telling stories about the structure of matter. There are neatly arranged appetizers that demonstrate the fundamental symmetry of the universe at its inception in the Big Bang. Then chilled soup with Kepler, who demonstrates hexagonal symmetry with the aid of a snowflake, and his irascible lab partner Tycho Brahe with his gold nose. For the amuse-gueule, the bon vivant Gell-Mann—who was the Adam to the atom, naming its particles—comes out to name the strange quark. The flamboyant Humphry Davy shows up for dinner with nitrous oxide (laughing gas!) for all. Robert Wilson, who built Fermilab outside Chicago to echo the forms of Beauvais Cathedral, not only forgoes dessert but talks everyone else into doing the same, for a bit of deprivation can bring the pioneer spirit to a team of physicists. He motivates everyone, including his cadre of physicists, by reciting the Song of Roland to them. By the end of the dinner, the reader not only has a headful of physicists and their stories, but has painlessly absorbed enough technical knowledge to distinguish an up quark from a down quark and to understand why the Higgs matters.
Dr Kathryn Rudy
Lecturer in Art History
University of St Andrews

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