The Higgs boson is considered by physicists to be the keystone of the fundamental structure of matter, the elementary particle that gives mass to many others, in line with the theory known as the Standard Model.
In 2013, Englert, who died in Uccle in Belgium on Thursday, was awarded the Nobel Prize jointly with Briton Peter Higgs, who died in 2024.
The pair laid the theoretical foundations, as early as 1964, that would lead to the discovery of the boson in 2012 at CERN, the Swiss laboratory.
"It is with great sadness that we announce that Belgian theoretical physicist, Francois Englert, has passed away at the age of 93," CERN said on Facebook.
"With his associate, Robert Brout, he demonstrated that fundamental particles could acquire mass by interacting with a fundamental field that exists throughout the Universe," it said.
