W-boson, Goldstone boson, Higgs boson and all that

The Higgs boson has been much in the news lately. We look back at the path which had led to the prediction and the recent observation of this elementary particle. Weak interactions, the W-boson, and the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking - which relies on Bose statistics - are at the core of this development. These topics are first outlined in brief. Then, after a summary of how the Higgs boson was discovered by experiments at CERN we make a passing mention of the way in which it provides a window on physics beyond the Standard Model. In the spirit of this collection, we keep the discussions as non-technical as possible. (author)