Fabiola Gianotti led one of two teams that discovered the Higgs boson, the most exciting feat of modern physics. Her team used a $10 billion particle accelerator to crash protons into each other at nearly the speed of light. When they sifted through the microscopic debris, they found evidence of an energy field, which apparently permeates the universe. As other forms of energy pass through this “Higgs field,” much like an airplane pushes through a stiff headwind, the Higgs bosons attach themselves to these particles of energy and give them mass. And that’s how every physical thing gets its body.