06/10/2026
We were delighted to be able to invite all our students and staff to tune in to watch Professor Halzen receive this award - we had the livestream of the presentation set up on a big screen this morning. Hearty congratulations to Prof. Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin on the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics for his pioneering work on the detection of neutrinos with IceCube. We were delighted and honoured to host Professor Halzen when he delivered our 2025 Grubb Parsons Lecture, part of our Major Public Lecture Series, on the subject of 'ICECUBE: The Under-the-Ice Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole.'
Prof. Halzen has a long connection with Physics in Durham, including writing an influential textbook, Quark and Leptons, with Prof. Alan Martin.
https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/physics/news/prof-francis-halzen/
Watch his 2025 Grubb Parsons lecture online at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn_6kVRkHy8&t=5s
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics to Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”
Francis Halzen realised that ice at the South Pole could be used to track particles known as neutrinos. His vision and scientific leadership have been fundamental for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory – a cubic kilometre of ice that is equipped with light sensors. Using IceCube, researchers can capture neutrinos from extremely energy-rich processes in the distant universe.
Neutrinos are everywhere, but they do not make themselves known. They pass all the way through the Earth and through our bodies without us noticing. Very rarely, a single neutrino will interact with an atomic nucleus, which makes it possible for someone with the right equipment to discover them.
Scientists have long known that the cosmos contains natural particle accelerators, which fire out particles with energies up to a million times more than can be achieved in laboratories on Earth. Much about these sources is mysterious: what are they, where are they, and what are the main processes inside them?
Neutrinos with extremely high energies are created in the same environments as other types of particles. However, unlike other particles, neutrinos reach us without changing direction or losing energy. This means they can provide information that is not available in any other way.
Francis Halzen first presented his vision for capturing neutrinos at the South Pole in 1988. When a neutrino collides with an atomic nucleus, it produces a flash of light that can be tracked by sensors in the clear glacial ice. The South Pole’s ice has many advantages, as it is free from various types of interference and the area is geologically stable, with no earthquakes. Halzen and his idea soon gained the support of other researchers and, just a few years later, preliminary testing was conducted on sensors in ice.
Cosmic neutrinos with extremely high energies are very rare, so an enormous volume of ice is needed to observe an adequate number of collisions. IceCube covers an entire cubic kilometre and was finished in 2011. Researchers soon discovered the first high-energy neutrinos and, a few years later, could publish their discovery of neutrinos that must originate far outside our solar system. The search for the universe’s neutrino sources could begin in earnest.
The neutrino interactions that are continuously collected by IceCube will provide researchers with novel knowledge about the violent settings in which high-energy neutrinos can be created – and could even reveal previously unknown cosmic phenomena.
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