The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in Physics in recognition of his contributions to the Ice Cube Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin, according to Russia Today. Halzen, born in Belgium, is eighty-two years old and affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States. The award was announced in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, and its value is twelve million Swedish krona, or about one million two hundred thousand dollars. Halzen had made a pivotal contribution to the development of the "Ice Cube" observatory, which is located deep in the Antarctic ice and monitors neutrinos coming from distant cosmic sources, which made it possible to study high-energy astronomical phenomena.