"The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a scientific gold rush, as physicists raced to chart the inner workings of the atom. While many of its mysteries came unraveled, one remained intractable--the "Infinity Puzzle." Although quantum field theory offered a powerful explanatory framework for elementary particle physics, it nonetheless made one utterly ridiculous prediction: that certain events had an infinite probability of occurring. In The Infinity Puzzle, acclaimed theoretical physicist Frank Close covers half a century of particle physics and explains how scientists reached a solution that enables theory to match what we see in the real world, and in so doing gave rise to the idea of the Higgs boson. With a physicist's expertise and a historian's care, Close describes the personalities and competition, the dead ends and the sudden insights, in a story for the pursuit of an orderly universe. This updated edition includes a new epilogue that brings the story up to date, including the July 4, 2012, announcement of a Higgs "beyond reasonable doubt" and discussion of where physics goes next."--Publisher's website.