British physicist Peter Higgs, winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for the “Higgs boson,” considered the fundamental building block of the fundamental structure of matter, died yesterday at the age of 94, the University of Edinburgh announced today.

“He died peacefully at home on Monday, April 8 after a short illness,” the University said in a statement.

Higgs predicted the existence of a new particle, the so-called “god particle”in 1964, but he had to almost 50 years would pass until its existence was confirmed.

The Higgs theory is related to how the subatomic particles that are the building blocks of matter form their mass. This theoretical understanding is a central part of the so-called Standard Model, which describes the physics of how the world is constructed.

The University of Edinburgh said his ground-breaking 1964 work demonstrated how “elementary particles achieved mass through the existence of a new subatomic particle” that became known as the Higgs boson.

In 2012, in one of the biggest discoveries in physics in decades, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, announced that they had finally found the Higgs boson using the $10 billion particle accelerator built in a tunnel 27 kilometers below the border Switzerland-France.

Higgs won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, along with Francois Engler of Belgium, who in independent research came up with the same theory.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, Higgs spent most of his working life at the University of Edinburgh, which established the Higgs Center for Theoretical Physics in his honor in 2012.

University of Edinburgh vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson said Higgs, who was born in the Scottish capital, was “a remarkable individual, a truly gifted scientist whose vision and imagination have enriched our knowledge of the world around us”.

“His pioneering work has inspired thousands of scientists, and his legacy will continue to inspire many more for generations to come.”