Physics 2026 · Announced Oct 6
Francis Halzen
The physicist who talked the world into building a telescope out of ice.
Born 1944 · Belgium / United States · University of Wisconsin–Madison
13 yrs
The wait, from the first deep-space neutrinos (2013) to the prize
1944
Year born
Solo
Won this prize alone
Oct 6
Announced in 2026
Their part in the prize
Halzen was the lead scientist of IceCube for most of its life. He argued for decades that clear, deep polar ice could catch neutrinos from space, and he led the team that built it and found them.
Why it matters
Light and radio waves get blocked on their way to us. Neutrinos do not. IceCube gave us a new way to look at the most violent places in space, like the areas around giant black holes.
The road to the prize
- 1990sA smaller test detector, AMANDA, is built at the South Pole.
- 2005Drilling starts on the full-size IceCube.
- 2010IceCube is finished: more than 5,000 sensors in the ice.
- 2013First high-energy neutrinos from outside our solar system.
- 2018A neutrino is traced back to a distant galaxy for the first time.
- 2026Nobel Prize in Physics.
The official reason
"for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos…"