God particle scientist Professor Peter Higgs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics last year, says he finds his new-found fame "a bit of a nuisance".
In the first episode of The Life Scientific on BBC Radio 4, the unassuming 84-year-old talks frankly about the work pressures that helped break up his marriage.
He also reveals how he struggled alone with his theories in the 1960s.
"Nobody else took what I was doing seriously, so nobody would want to work with me," he tells presenter Jim Al-Khalili.
"I was thought to be a bit eccentric and maybe cranky."
Prof Higgs was thrust into the limelight after the elusive fundamental particle that bears his name was found by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the huge atom-smashing machine built to probe the origins of the universe.
However, the transition to celebrityhood was not a comfortable one for him.
Asked how he feels about being stopped in the street and asked for his autograph, he says: "It's a bit of a nuisance sometimes, frankly."
The Higgs boson, nicknamed the God Particle, provides mass to the most basic building blocks of matter.
Without it, the Standard Model theory that combines all the fundamental forces and particles of the universe would have fallen down.
Prof Higgs predicted the existence of the particle while working at Edinburgh University in 1964.
But until the momentous discovery at the LHC near Geneva in 2012 it had proved impossible to track down.
