On October 8, 2013, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences granted the Nobel Prize in Physics to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs for their theory on how particles obtain mass. Englert and Higgs were able to solidify their theory in 2012, with the discovery of the Higgs particle (Higgs boson), also called the God particle, which is surmised to have caused the Big Bang. Higgs, who first came up with this theory in 1964, suggested that particles gain mass through certain interactions, thereby leading to the production of the basic units of matter.
What’s fascinating, however, is that not only is Francois Englert a Nobel Prize winner, but he is also a Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was born on June 11, 1932 in Brussels, Belgium, and was a young child when Belgium was invaded by the Nazis. Englert was able to survive the Holocaust by living in many different orphanages under assumed identities. Following the war he studied electrical-mechanical engineering in Brussels. In 1959, Englert earned his PhD in physical sciences from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles. He then went on to work at Cornell University, only to later return as a teacher to Universite Libre de Bruxelles. In 1984, Englert became a Professor at Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy. In 2004, together with Higgs, and Robert Brout, Englert earned Israel’s Wolf Prize. Robert Brout was an American-Belgian of Jewish decent. He died in 2011 and as a result, he was unable to receive the Nobel Prize, as the prize is not given posthumously.
Through remarkable self-discipline and strength, Englert, once with no prospects for any future (never mind a successful one), transformed himself into a distinguished Nobel Prize-winning professor. He had every right to live the rest of his life as a defeated man, but instead he used his potential, rebuilt himself, and took advantage of whatever opportunities he could find.
The Nobel Prize has been awarded to over 850 accomplished men and women. At least 20 percent of the recipients have been Jewish, despite the fact that the Jewish population is less than 0.2 percent of the world populace. Jews have received the Nobel Prize in all six areas: Physics, Chemistry, Literature, Physiology/Medicine, Peace, and Economics. In 1905, Adolf von Baeyer became the first Jew to receive the Nobel Prize. He was granted this honor for his work in chemistry, specifically for his work on organic dyes and hydroaromatic compounds.
Since Baeyer, many other Jews have also received this award. In 2013, in addition to Englert, James Rothman and Randy Schekman (Medicine), and Arieh Warshel, Michael Levitt, and Martin Karplus (Chemistry) all received Nobel Prizes.
Elie Wiesel, and Imre Kertesz, both Nobel Prize winners, also survived the horrors of the Holocaust. Walter Kohn, Otto Stern, Albert Einstein, Hans Krebs, and Martin Karplus, all escaped Nazi Germany before the war. In 1958, Boris Pasternak, a Jew living in Russia, was forced by the Soviets to decline accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, even after he had already accepted it.
I think that this is a powerful lesson for us all. Englert and the other Jewish Holocaust survivors chose to persevere after the war, and are now known for their famous contributions to the scientific world. Their work is widely recognized and the stuff of science-textbooks, just as the Higgs particle will certainly become in the near future.
