<human>:  Who was the first person to propose the existence of the Higgs boson?
<bot>: The Higgs boson was first proposed by Peter Higgs in 1964. Higgs originally called his theory "spontaneous symmetry breaking," but later changed the name to "the Higgs mechanism." In order to explain why particles have mass, Higgs proposed that there is a field that permeates all of space. This field is called the Higgs field. Particles interact with the Higgs field, and as a result, get their mass. The Higgs boson is the particle that carries the Higgs field.