  The discovery of the Higgs boson is a major milestone in our progress toward
understanding the natural world. A particular aim of this article is to show
how diverse ideas came together in the conception of electroweak symmetry
breaking that led up to the discovery. I will also survey what we know that we
did not know before, what properties of the Higgs boson remain to be
established, and what new questions we may now hope to address.
