The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 physics Nobel to Francis Halzen for IceCube, the South Pole detector that found high-energy astrophysical neutrinos.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday to Francis Halzen for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.
Halzen, 82, a Belgian-born physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, argued that clear glacial ice at the South Pole could serve as a detector. IceCube instruments a cubic kilometre of ice with light sensors that register the rare flashes produced when a neutrino interacts. Reuters said the academy credited the work with opening a new way to study violent cosmic processes that ordinary telescopes cannot easily see.
Halzen told reporters he was surprised the idea worked as well as it did. In a statement carried by the IceCube collaboration he called the prize a celebration of an unusual project and of the collaborators who built it. The BBC reported that he first presented the South Pole concept in 1988.
An IceCube Upgrade is expected to return first science data later this year, the collaboration said. A larger extension, IceCube-Gen2, covering about 8 cubic kilometres, is planned to become operational in 2033 and to detect far more neutrinos, Reuters reported.
Halzen said the main scientific returns were still ahead and that it was too early to say exactly what the detector would reveal about the universe.
People Sentiments Positive
- Francis Halzen said he was lucky the South Pole idea worked, because few people, including himself, expected it to.
- Erin O'Sullivan, spokesperson of the IceCube collaboration, said the prize recognised a path from first discoveries toward robust detections.