CERN, the LHC, the Higgs boson and the rest

Abstract The Higgs field was proposed in 1964 as a new kind of field that fills the entire Universe and gives mass to all elementary particles. The Higgs boson, a wave in that field, was discovered at CERN in 2012 by the two international collaborations ATLAS and CMS which operate the two eponymous detectors installed at the Large Hadron Collider. This achievement was the result of several decades of scientific developments and constructions by hundreds of teams, thousands of scientists and staff all over the globe. None of this would have been possible without the vision and dedication of a few individuals who set up the scene in the years post-World War II.