Who was Higgs – and what is the Boson?

At www.io9.com March 22nd there is a piece on the Higgs boson and the fact one physicist gave his name to the theoretical particle when there were other contenders actively writing papers and doing research in the same year, 1964. Peter Higgs has been credited with the discovery – or the original hypothesis (as it has yet to be discovered) and yet there were other teams working on a similar project (story comes from New Scientist).