Japanese professors welcome Nobel Prize for IceCube project chief

Chiba – Two Japanese professors have expressed their joy after University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Francis Halzen, who led an international project they participated in, was named winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics.

“We were able to catch a glimpse of the universe that no one has ever seen,” Chiba University professor Shigeru Yoshida told a news conference at the university in the city of Chiba, Tuesday.

Yoshida, director of the university’s International Center for Hadron Astrophysics, also said that he is “very happy” that Halzen won the prize for the IceCube project, which observed high-energy neutrinos in Antarctica.

Recalling his participation in the project in 2002, Yoshida said that people around him opposed his decision. “I was skeptical.”

Yoshida said, “We should keep taking on new challenges. In the world of science, nothing is promised from the beginning.”

At a separate news conference, held online, Aya Ishihara, also a professor at the Japanese university, expressed eagerness to “promote a next-generation IceCube project.”

Ishihara said she hopes that Halzen’s winning of the Nobel Prize will “help advance (neutrino research) worldwide.”

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced Tuesday its decision to award the Nobel Prize in Physics to Halzen for his “decisive contributions” to the IceCube project and “the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.”