"I Thought It Would Fail!" Francis Halzen: Winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize In Physics [Reupload from 2022]

Francis Halzen (0:01)

Being a physicist, from all objective point of views, is a miserable career. Yes. And I don't have to state the reasons. The only reason it's worth doing is you just enjoy this, you're obsessed by it, you love what you're doing. And so if you do it as a job, it's going to be very, very disappointing, I think. So don't underestimate yourself.

Until I went on this crazy adventure of Amanda and IceCube, I always lived with the insecurity that I didn't belong to the circles I moved in, which I think must be true for almost every graduate student. Just get over that.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Brian Keating (0:56)

Well, it's not every day you get to talk to a hero of physics, of modern physics, someone whose roots go back quite a way, someone who's been a leader in the field of astrophysics, of particle physics, who's an educator and a communicator of science. But also who is actually, I think, today's guest is my first ever guest who is a professor of mine.

Although I took his class as an adjunct student. Well, I was at the University of Wisconsin and it is one of my personal heroes. This is Francis Halzen, who is a Belgian particle physicist, although he's been in America probably more than half his life. He's the Hilldale and Gregory Breit, distinguished professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He's a director of the Institute for Elementary Particle Physics, and he's the principal investigator of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, which has operated at the South Pole, Antarctica since 2010 Before that, there was Amanda. Francis, it's a certain treat to be here for me to host you here rather. I just hope you won't share the grade that I got in your club. Please don't tell my audience.

Francis Halzen (2:11)

I don't think my bureaucracy, my administration is so good that I would be able to produce it.

Brian Keating (2:18)

Well, it was one of my favorite classes of all time, not to mention the fact that back then it was rare that professors wrote the textbook that was used for the class. I think I had that only with Leon Cooper at Brown, with one of his quantum mechanics books.

But to take this course on particle physics with you, and it was such a treat. I thought we'd start there, Francis. We always start, we had on Martin Rees, Lord Martin Rees last week, and he spoke about his book. We always do a scenario called judging books by their covers, where we look at the cover of your book and we judge it, and how did you come up with the name, and hopefully entice a tenfold increase in book sales instantaneously. The book we're talking about is called Quarks and Leptons. It was a wonderful, wonderful book that I had there. We'll show it on the screen. It's written with your co-author, Alan Martin.

I don't recall much about him, but certainly taking it from you was quite a treat. Francis, can you help us judge Quarks and Leptons by its cover? How did you come up with the title, the subtitle, and the cover illustration?

Francis Halzen (3:29)

The title was actually, first of all, I must say this was a long time ago. And that's the amazing thing about the book, right? People don't realize now that this book was written a long time ago, and that the W, the Z, the top Quark, none of these things, the Higgs, none of these things had been discovered. You know, like the whole book is kind of prediction of the standard model.

And, in fact, the book was in print when the W was discovered at CERN, the weak intermediate boson.

Brian Keating (4:12)

Wow.

Francis Halzen (4:14)

And so the editor called me and said, you can still change things, you know, I've read the newspaper and I said, there's nothing to change. And he was kind of worried that he had been part of some huge gamble.

So, but the title is kind of embarrassing because although I think it was really, the books were really written in parallel. Okun, famous Russian theorist, wrote the book, Leptons and Quarks, that came out around the same time. So it's not that original.

Brian Keating (4:58)

And the illustration that you have on the cover, what does that represent? There's...

Francis Halzen (5:04)

I, the only thing I remember is that I actually made it. And it remembers, you know, jets were something rather new then.

You know, quark glue on jets, the concept. And so I know that it represents like a jet made in deep inelastic scattering or something like that. It's amazing that I cannot remember.