It seems 2013 wasn't a great year for the Queen, with Peter Higgs also rejecting a knighthood to go alongside Danny Boyle. A British theoretical physicist, the Geordie professor won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 after the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland proved the existence of a fundamental particle in the make-up of matter first discovered by the scientist alongside Francois Englert - the so-called "Higgs boson". Higgs did accept The Order of the Companion of Honour in 2012, wrongly believing it to have been a gift only from the Queen herself and not the whole state, as it does not confer any title or precedence. However, when asked by the Guardian why he refused a knighthood, Higgs revealed his scorn for such titles, stating that the honours system "is used for political purposes by the government in power".
NUFC editor for WhatCulture.com/NUFC. History graduate (University of Edinburgh) and NCTJ-trained journalist. I love sports, hopelessly following Newcastle United and Newcastle Falcons. My pastimes include watching and attending sports matches religiously, reading spy books and sampling ales.
