I’ve followed digital sabbaths and cellphone-free vacations for a while, but everybody else can give it up now: Peter Higgs wins.

The media spotlight has often been too harsh for Peter Higgs, the Edinburgh physicist, who disappeared off on holiday without a mobile phone this week to escape the inevitable rush of journalists that bears down on every winner of a Nobel prize.

The move was carefully calculated and profoundly successful. The Royal Swedish Academy made calls to the scientist’s phone but failed to make contact before – or after – announcing the winners of the 2013 prize in physics on Tuesday morning.