Hedgehog science

Peter "Boson" Higgs  aka Peter "Waited 5 decades for a Nobel" Higgs, died in the fullness of his 94 years at his home in Edinburgh on 8th April 2024 . He's pictured [R] the year I was born, 10 years before he made his seminal calculation about the structure of matter. Obvs, other people added other data bricks and intellectual mortar to cement the Higgs boson into the standard understanding of the physics of the Universe.

There were tributes on MetaFilter including a citation to a post-Nobel article in the Guardian. That piece included a memorable confession: Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' ".
Confession? Indictment!

 🦔 Higgs is a great example of ‘The fox publishes many things, but the hedgehog publishes one big thing' paraphrased from Archilochus, Erasmus, Berlin [that would be Languagehat]. The productivity failure article cited above gave me a rush of empathy. Three of the most interesting, public-engaging, well-travelled, widely-read, student-inspiring faculty at my alma mater were all at one time up before the beak for not publishing enough. Least Publishable Units LPUs are countable but that doesn't make them valuable - even collectively.

This is not the first time I've taken my chapeau off to a scientific Hedgehog. In 2015 I made a sweeping bow to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi when she was retired from l'institut Pasteur in 2015. After isolating the HIV virus in 1983, FBS spent the next 30 years immersed in the scientific, medical, social and political aspects of the virus and AIDS. Focus focus focus. 

• "πόλλ' οἶδ' ἀλώπηξ, ἀλλ' ἐχῖνος ἓν μέγα" Archilochus of Paros
  
• Multa novit vulpes, verum echinus unum magnum Erasmus of Rotterdam
  
• A fox knows many things, a hedgehog knows one great thing. Berlin of Riga (and Oxford)