Francis Halzen EL PAIS/BERNARDO PÉREZ (www.elpais.com)
College of Wisconsin–Madison physicist Francis Halzen has been elected to membership within the Nationwide Academy of Sciences.
Halzen is one in every of 120 scientists elected this 12 months in recognition of their distinguished and persevering with achievements in authentic analysis, in keeping with the academy’s announcement of the brand new members this week. Election to the academy is among the many highest honors {that a} scientist can obtain.
A Vilas Analysis Professor and Gregory Breit Distinguished Professor of Physics, Halzen directs the UW–Madison Institute for Elementary Particle Physics Analysis and is the principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. The distinctive telescope — constructed throughout the ice under the South Pole — is the world’s largest and is designed to survey the universe for neutrinos. The practically massless particles not often work together with different matter and may present details about distant galaxies, black holes and different cosmic objects.
Halzen oversaw the design and growth of IceCube and its predecessor experiment, the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. Accomplished in 2010, IceCube is the primary observatory of its variety. It detects a sort of sunshine known as Cherenkov radiation which is emitted when a neutrino collides right into a proton or neutron in an atom throughout the telescope’s billion tons of instrumented ice. These collisions present scientists with sufficient info to find out detected neutrinos’ vitality and level of origin.
Halzen’s accomplishments in particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology have garnered him quite a few awards and recognitions over the course of his profession, together with the 2014 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, the 2015 Balzan Prize and the 2021 Bruno Rossi Prize. He has printed greater than 570 papers and has been a fellow of the American Bodily Society since 1994.
