Ben Richmond explains why the Higgs Boson has often been called "the God particle":
"God particle" can be traced back to a single source. In 1993 Nobel Prize winner and head of Fermilab Leon Lederman, along with writer Dick Teresis, released a book called The God Particle: If the Universe Is the Answer, What is the Question? Lederman called the Higgs boson the "God Particle," as a tribute to its significance, and because its discovery would bring all of physics into a much simpler, more comprehensible form. The authors never claim that the Higgs boson’s discovery would prove or disprove God, in a Christian or otherwise, sense.
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