The 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics has a link to Aligarh Muslim University. Prof. Francis Halzen, whose idea led to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole, won the prize this week. Three PhD scholars from AMU’s Department of Physics are members of the IceCube Collaboration.
The Nobel Prize
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the prize in Stockholm on Tuesday, 6 October 2026. Prof. Halzen, 82, was born in Belgium and works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which leads IceCube. The prize carries 12 million Swedish kronor.
Prof. Halzen proposed using the clear, deep ice under the South Pole as a natural detector for neutrinos, tiny particles that travel through matter almost without stopping. IceCube records the faint light produced when a neutrino collides with matter in the ice. Over more than a decade of data, the observatory has identified a flow of high-energy neutrinos coming from outside our galaxy, and researchers have pointed to regions around supermassive black holes in some active galaxies as possible sources.
Also readSir Syed Day 2026: Why AMU Celebrates 17 October and How
The AMU link
According to a report in India Education Diary, three PhD scholars at AMU are members of the IceCube Collaboration:
- Anuj Kumar Upadhyay
- Gopal Garg
- Krishnamurthy Jayakumar
They work under the supervision of Prof. Mohammad Sajjad Athar, Chairman of the Department of Physics and a specialist in neutrino physics, who congratulated the scholars on the recognition for the collaboration.
Why it matters for AMU
Large physics experiments like IceCube are run by international collaborations of universities. Membership gives AMU’s researchers access to the data and analysis work of one of the main neutrino experiments in the world, and strengthens the neutrino physics group in the Department of Physics.
We will update this story if AMU issues an official statement.
