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Francis Halzen awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics

© IceCube NSF
© RUB
Francis Halzen with Prof. Dr. Dr. Wolfgang Rhode and Prof. Dr. Julia Tjus, RAPP principal investigators and contacts at TU Dortmund University and Ruhr University Bochum, respectively. Wolfgang Rhode is co-spokesperson and Julia Tjus is spokesperson of SFB 1491.
The award recognises his decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

Halzen is a longstanding scientific partner of the RAPP Center. Our close collaboration on IceCube-related research addresses high-energy neutrinos and their cosmic origins, central questions of the RAPP Center’s research programme. This work includes joint research with Prof. Julia Tjus at Ruhr University Bochum. Halzen is also an external scientific collaborator of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 1491.

Based at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Halzen has played a central role in developing IceCube and establishing neutrino astronomy. The observatory uses a cubic kilometre of Antarctic ice to detect high-energy neutrinos and investigate the cosmic processes that produce them.

On 30 May 2022, the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy at Ruhr University Bochum awarded Halzen an honorary doctorate. The faculty recognised his outstanding achievements in astrophysics and particle physics, as well as his close scientific collaboration with Bochum researchers. The ceremony took place during the SFB 1491 kick-off week, with Julia Tjus delivering the laudation.

The RAPP community is delighted to celebrate this outstanding recognition of a longstanding colleague and scientific partner.

RAPP researchers contribute to IceCube through theoretical studies and the analysis of observations. In 2023, the IceCube Collaboration published the first image of the Milky Way using high-energy neutrinos. Machine learning methods developed at TU Dortmund were essential to this result. Mirco Hünnefeld, whose doctoral research was supervised by RAPP principal investigator Prof. Wolfgang Rhode, was one of the lead analysts.

Learn more about IceCube’s observation of our galaxy in “The Milky Way in Neutrino Light”, available in English and German.

Watch in English · Watch in German