Nobel Prize-winning physicist dies aged 96. Forced to sell medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills.

An experimental physicist who won a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on subatomic particles has died aged 96.

Leon Lederman coined the phrase "God particle", a shorthand description of the then-theoretical Higgs boson, in the title of a 1993 book.

His discoveries proved crucial in the identification of the subatomic particle that accounts for matter having mass in 2012.

In 1988 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the discovery of another sub-atomic particle, the muon neutrino.

The American scientist later auctioned off his gold medal for $765,000 (£665,000) to help pay medical bills after being diagnosed with dementia.

He died at a nursing home in the Idaho town of Rexburg on Wednesday, said Ellen Carr Lederman, his wife of 37 years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/leon-lederman-death-nobel-prize-sell-physicist-higgs-boson-god-particle-medical-bills-a8569761.html