The hunt for the Higgs particle

With the advent of the LHC, the hunt for the Higgs boson enters its crucial phase. These three lectures will review: the Higgs mechanism; its implementation in the minimal Standard Model; possible alternatives with and without elementary scalar fields; the presently available information on electroweak gauge symmetry breaking and the Higgs particle; the properties of the Higgs boson(s) in the Standard Model and its supersymmetric extensions; the strategies for direct searches at colliders, with emphasis on the LHC, and comments on the possible scenarios that may emerge.