W.K.H. Panofsky Prize: The Long Journey to the Higgs Boson: ATLAS

The discovery of the Higgs boson announced in July 2012 by ATLAS and CMS was a culminating point for a very long journey in the realization of the LHC project. Building up the experimental programme with this unique high-energy collider, and developing the very sophisticated detectors built and operated by world-wide collaborations, meant a fabulous scientific and human adventure spanning more than three decades. This talk will recall the initial motivation for the project, tracing its history, as well as illustrate some of the many milestones that finally led to the rich harvest of physics so far. The talk will focus on the ATLAS experiment, including also new, very recent results from the ongoing 13 TeV Run-2 of LHC. And this is only the beginning of this fantastic journey into unchartered physics territory with the LHC.