General Question about Higgs boson

Routaran

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...?newsfeed=true

just read this news article and sounds thoroughly exciting.
I wanted to know in general exactly gave rise to the idea of the higgs boson imbuing elementary particles with mass.

What were the discoveries leading up to and that gave rise the the idea that there should be a field present at every point in the universe that interacts only with certain particles, slowing them down and as a result causes them to have mass while others like photons flight straight through unaffected at the cosmic speed limit c

for example, i know first ppl thought light was a wave and then searched for a medium and couldn't find any and then went on to discover that was wasn't quiet a wave.
something similar but i would appreciate more details on what went on and what discoveries helped create and shape the idea of the higgs boson.

Routaran

Bump!

ZapperZ

Please browse through the High Energy Physics forum.

Zz.