The Independent: Peter Higgs, 78, is modesty personified. A theoretical particle physicist, it took him 20 years before he could even bring himself to call the so-called God particle by its more scientific name – the Higgs boson. Up to that point, he preferred the more prosaic term, "scalar boson".

The Higgs is just one of the discoveries that the Large Hadron Collider is expected to make. The international team of physicists behind the project believes that the LHC will almost certainly produce a jewel box of discoveries that will light up the infinitesimally small world of sub-atomic physics.

"The actual discovery of the Higgs boson, if it happens, is only one part of the programme. There is vastly more for the machine to do," Higgs said. "I'm most excited for instance about the possible identification of super-symmetry particles – symmetrical particles of the particles we already know".