On 4 July, particle physicists around the world eagerly joined many who had congregated early at CERN to hear the latest news on the search for the Higgs boson at the LHC (4 July: a day to remember). It was a day that many will remember for years to come. The ATLAS and CMS collaborations announced that they had observed clear signs of a new boson consistent with being the Higgs boson, with a mass of around 126 GeV, at a siginificance of 5 σ. In this issue of CERN Courier the two collaborations present their evidence (Discovery of a new boson – the ATLAS perspective and Inside story: the search in CMS for the Higgs boson) and CERN’s director-general reflects on broader implications (Viewpoint: an important day for science). There was further good news from Fermilab with new results on the search for the Higgs at the Tevatron, described above.
