Britain’s Peter Higgs and Belgian colleague Francois Englert had won the Nobel Prize in physics for their contribution to explaining the Big Bang theory. Nearly 50 years ago, they had independently come up with a theory explaining how the universe’s building blocks could clump together to gain mass and form everything we see today. That theory rested on the existence of the Boson particle, which was discovered on March 14, 2013. Probably the bigger feat to the theory and subsequent theory, however, is the fact that despite living in the 21st century of cell phones, internet and an overall constant bombardment of information, Higgs had no idea he even won the Nobel Prize.

It probably would have helped Higgs if he had owned a cell phone, which the famously shy 84-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh does not own. Instead, he learned of the news from a former neighbor who had pulled up in her car as he was returning from lunch in Edinburgh.

“She congratulated me on the news and I said ‘oh, what news?'” said Higgs.

The Boson particle, also nicknamed the “God particle”, which gives matter its substance, or mass, was first theorized in 1964 independently by Englert and Higgs, but Higgs is quick to spread the credit to all those who helped with the research.

“I should remind you that although only two of us have shared this prize, Francois Englert of Brussels and myself, that the work in 1964 involved three groups of people, (including) two in Brussels,” Higgs said. “Although a lot of people seem to think I did all this single-handed, it was actually part of a theoretical program which had been started in 1960.”

Then 50 years later, scientists at European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced last year that they had finally found a Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the $10 billion collider built in a nearly 17-mile-long tunnel under Geneva, Switzerland. In July of that year, in a packed hall in Geneva, Englert and Higgs met for the first time.

“In terms of later events, it seemed to me for many years that the experimental verification might not come in my lifetime,”said Higgs, “but since the start up of the LHC it has been pretty clear that they would get there, and despite some mishaps they did get there”.

The Nobel Prize in physics is the most prestigious award of its kind, coming with a $1.25 million cash award. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences selects the winner, after thousands of scientists around the world nominate researchers.