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UW-Madison celebrates Francis Halzen’s Nobel recognition for neutrino research
The university held a ceremony Friday for physicist Francis Halzen, honored with the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics for work on neutrinos. Halzen helped develop IceCube, a neutrino observatory buried beneath Antarctic ice.
MADISON, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-Madison held a ceremony Friday, Oct. 23, to recognize physicist Francis Halzen, who received the 2026 Nobel Prize in physics earlier this month for contributions to neutrino research.
Halzen helped develop IceCube, an observatory embedded beneath the ice in Antarctica that detects neutrinos, tiny subatomic particles that are difficult to observe.
At the ceremony, Halzen recalled that he was working on a research proposal when he learned he had won the prize. He said he hoped the Nobel recognition would help secure approval for the proposal.
The award brings attention to UW-Madison’s role in research that uses a remote observatory to study particles passing through the Earth and Antarctic ice.