It's that time of year where the science community acknowledges some of its most important discoveries. The Nobel Prizes are being announced this week, and today has seen a fitting acknowledgement to one of the most important theories in theoretical physics.

François Englert and Peter W. Higgs both introduced the theory independently of each other in 1964. The idea being that it was the "last piece of the puzzle" of the standard model of particle physics. The "Higgs field" as it came to be known was supposed to be the field which exists everywhere, in which matter is "given" as a result of one particular particle moving through this field, the Higgs Boson. They explain it a lot better than I do.

Finally after almost 50 years, these two scientists have been given credit for their theory-turned discovery. Credit must also be given to the team of 3,000+ physicists and engineers who ran the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which in July last year gave sufficient evidence to accept that the Higgs Boson, and therefore the standard model of physics, is the real deal.

It's truly awesome to see this finally get the praise it deserves, and such an extraordinary man acknowledged for his contribution.

If you're strapped for time, minutephysics have a great video series explaining the Higgs Boson.

Roll on the rest of Nobel week!

Image credit: New York Times http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/10/09/science/09nobel-cnd01/09nobel-cnd01-articleLarge.jpg