Finding the Higgs was a key goal for the $10bn (£6bn) Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - a 27km (17-mile) circumference accelerator ring of superconducting magnets, designed to re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the Universe itself.
It is this field (and not the boson) that imparts mass to the fundamental particles that make up atoms. Without it, these particles would zip through the cosmos at the speed of light.