It was predicted in 1964 by Peter Higgs, a British physicist who was trying to fix a niggle in quantum theory, and independently, in various guises, by five other researchers.

ECONOMIST: The Higgs boson

In The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots, to Quantum Cryptography, due out soon from Doubleday, British author Simon Singh traces the evolution of the centuries-old battle between code writers and code breakers.

FORBES: I've got a secret