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OVER the past few months, the phrase 鈥渢he elusive Higgs boson, the particle that gives all others mass鈥� has become a bit shopworn. That is because many have struggled to find a concise way to describe the mass-giving mechanism theorised by Peter Higgs and two other groups in 1964. But for those who want the full story, there is Jim Baggott鈥檚 Higgs.

Rather than a portrait of the man himself, Higgs is a history of the standard model of particle physics 鈥� the framework that explains the interactions between the panoply of particles and forces that make up our universe. Baggott begins at the conception of the standard model at the start of the 20th century, and takes the reader up to the sighting of a particle very much like the Higgs two months ago at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.

The book is a comprehensive who鈥檚 who of modern physics. Baggott starts with the German mathematician Amalie Noether, who realised that conservation laws are consequences of deeper symmetries 鈥� an idea he playfully explains with a picture of Liz Hurley鈥檚 famously symmetrical face. He then carries on through Wolfgang Pauli鈥檚 exclusion principle, Murray Gell-Mann鈥檚 eightfold way and the eventual unification of two of the four fundamental forces of nature by Sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg and Abdus Salam, who won a Nobel prize for their work.

Yet while all the giants are there, the true protagonist of this tale is the physics itself. The science can be hard going at times, because Baggott doesn鈥檛 shy away from difficult concepts, but his detailed explanation of how the Higgs mechanism gives particles mass is extremely elegant.

When Baggott moves from the theory behind the standard model to the discovery of its particles, including the Higgs 鈥� the last piece of the puzzle 鈥� his tone becomes more lighthearted. He recounts the race to discover the predicted particles, the political quagmire of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider in Texas and the rivalry between CERN and its US counterpart Fermilab. And he painstakingly describes every twist and turn during the last few years of the hunt for the Higgs 鈥� from false starts to internet rumours.

Peter Higgs has always been embarrassed that it is his name associated with the particle, not only because five others came up with the mechanism at about the same time, but also because it doesn鈥檛 reflect the work of so many others before he became part of the story. Higgs helps put Higgs鈥檚 contribution in context and shows how he and the others were indeed standing on the shoulders of giants. It鈥檚 a book I imagine the reticent Higgs would approve of, even if he cringes at its name.