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IceCube pioneer Francis Halzen wins the 2026 physics Nobel Prize

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Belgian-born physicist Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin–Madison has won the 2026 physics Nobel Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm on Tuesday, 6 October 2026. He was honoured “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”, and does not share the 12 million Swedish kronor prize.

Why IceCube earned the physics Nobel Prize

Halzen realised that the clear ice deep beneath the South Pole could be used to catch neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with anything. IceCube, which he leads as principal investigator, is a cubic kilometre of ice fitted with thousands of light sensors that record the faint flashes produced on the rare occasions a neutrino collides with the ice.

Because neutrinos carry no electric charge, they travel almost undisturbed from where they were made. That makes them a pointer back to black holes and other violent objects that produce cosmic rays, whose origins have puzzled scientists for more than a century.

From first detection to the Milky Way

In 2013, IceCube announced the first detection of high-energy neutrinos from beyond the solar system. In 2017 it caught a neutrino traced to a supermassive black hole in a distant galaxy. According to the university, it later found evidence of neutrino emission from an active galaxy 47 million light-years away in 2022 and from our own Milky Way in 2023.

The US National Science Foundation funds the observatory, which is run by an international collaboration led from Madison. Halzen was born in 1944 in Tienen, Belgium, earned his PhD from KU Leuven in 1969 and joined the Wisconsin physics faculty in 1972.

“A celebration of a very unusual project”

“This is a celebration of a very unusual project,” Halzen said in a university statement, adding that its success “involved some luck”. He becomes the sixth physicist connected to UW–Madison to win a Nobel Prize. The physics award is the second of this year’s Nobel announcements, following the medicine prize on 5 October.

Source: NobelPrize.org | UW–Madison News

Photo: John Hardin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (resized)

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