SUBATOMIC INSPIRATION

In 1669, the Royal Society in England asked Isaac Newton for permission to publish one of his papers. Newton reluctantly agreed, on the condition that the society withhold his name. “I see not what there is desirable in public esteem,” he explained. “It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline.”

When it comes to shunning public esteem, the British physicist Peter Higgs—the namesake of the Higgs boson—is no less determined than Newton. Higgs refuses to use a cellphone or email, and after winning the Nobel Prize in 2013, he spent the day in. At times cranky or witty, Higgs ultimately remains an enigmatic presence throughout, not unlike his eponymous particle, the discovery of which caused such hoopla that, as he later said, it “ruined my life.”