From Tait to Higgs: A Short Documentary Film
“From Tait to Higgs” is a short film tracing the development of theoretical physics in Edinburgh from the Victorian era, starting with the work of Peter Guthrie Tait, up to the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the establishment of the Higgs Centre. The film highlights the contributions of several Tait Professors over the past century, including Charles D. Darwin, Max Born, Nicholas Kemmer, David Wallace, and Richard Kenway. Through interviews with prominent physicists and researchers, the film provides a comprehensive overview of the historical context, the evolution of theoretical physics, and the emergence of computational science as research methodology.
The film was premiered at Higgs Festival, 20 October 023 at the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, the University of Edinburgh, celebrating 10 years since Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics (in 2013), alongside François Englert, for the theory of how particles acquire mass. The content is shared under Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial license.
A film by Mariana Duarte, produced by Ines Foidl (Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics), with contributions from Richard Kenway, David Wallace, Victoria Martin and Neil Turok.
This work has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 851196).
From Tait to Higgs: A Short Documentary Film, by Mariana Duarte and Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics, 2023, CC BY-NC. Header: Picture of Peter Guthrie Tait, the Scottish physicist, 1870, in Knott, C. G. (1911) Life and Scientific Work of Peter Guthrie Tait, Supplementing the Two Volumes of Scientific Papers Published in 1898 and 1900, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in the Public Domain.
