The crucial role that the Higgs boson plays in the
standard model for strong weak and electromagnetic interactions is reviewed.
Recently a resonance with properties consistent with
those expected for the Higgs boson has been discovered at the large hadron collider (LHC).
This discovery
constrains speculations about new physics beyond what is in the standard
model. The motivation for such new physics, at roughly the energy scale probed
by LHC experiments, and the nature of the constraints imposed by the recent
LHC results are discussed.
