Francis Halzen, the sole winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, flashes a victory sign with both hands at a hotel in Turin, Italy, on Tuesday (local time). [AP]
Francis Halzen, the sole winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, flashes a victory sign with both hands at a hotel in Turin, Italy, on Tuesday (local time). [AP]

Belgian particle physicist Francis Halzen, 82, who won this year's Nobel Prize in Physics as the sole laureate for the first time in 34 years for his neutrino observation research that laid new foundations for studying cosmic phenomena, said he hoped the prize would help his next research proposal get approved — signaling no intention of slowing down.

Halzen, a distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, made the remark at a news conference held Tuesday (local time) in Stockholm immediately after the announcement of his award. "I plan to spend Wednesday writing a research proposal, and I hope this prize will help get it approved," he said, drawing laughter from the room.

Born on March 23, 1944, Halzen is well past 80 but remains as active as ever in his field.

While scientists at South Korean universities and research institutes typically retire around age 65, the trend toward lifetime appointments with no mandatory retirement age is growing in the international scientific community — though few remain as prolific as Halzen. He holds a distinguished professorship at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, serves as director of its Elementary Particle Physics Institute, and leads the IceCube Neutrino Observatory — the world's largest neutrino detector, in operation since 2010 at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica.

IceCube played a decisive role in earning Halzen the solo Nobel Prize in Physics, the first in 34 years. The Nobel Committee cited his "decisive contributions to the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin."

According to Reuters and other media, Halzen conceived the idea in 1988 of using the vast Antarctic ice sheet as a telescope to detect neutrinos. Because neutrinos carry no electric charge, have almost no mass, and pass through most matter without a trace — earning them the nickname "ghost particles" — they are notoriously difficult to detect, which led him to devise such an unconventional approach. Twenty-three years later, in 2011, he saw the concept realized with the completion of IceCube, which now involves hundreds of researchers and has become the backbone of neutrino science.

The IceCube concept had already earned recognition for its ingenuity before the Nobel. Smithsonian Magazine, the science and history publication of the Smithsonian Institution, called IceCube — born from what it described as Halzen's offbeat imagination — "a remarkable experiment heralding a new era in astronomy," and presented him with its American Ingenuity Award in 2014.

At the news conference following the Nobel announcement, Halzen was characteristically modest. "When we started this project, everyone knew it could be a good idea, but almost no one — including me — actually thought it would succeed," he said. "I was really lucky."

He went on to say that the greatest reward of the Nobel Prize was that "the glory can also go to the truly courageous colleagues who were with me in the early days of this project," crediting his IceCube collaborators with sharing in the honor.

Meanwhile, a next-generation expansion of IceCube is set to begin operation in 2033, capable of detecting 10 times more neutrinos than the current facility, including far weaker ones.

Halzen told Reuters that the major implications of his research remain unclear, and that it is still too early to say exactly what it will reveal about the universe. "What really excites me is that I cannot yet answer that question," he said. "This is just an introduction to the science — astronomy hasn't even begun yet."


kate01@heraldcorp.com