Benjamin Safdi, a physicist in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division and an associate professor of physics at UC Berkeley, has been awarded a 2026 New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation for his “wide-ranging contributions to the search for the axion, a hypothetical particle that would explain a long-standing puzzle about the strong nuclear force, and could account for the mysterious dark matter that makes up 85 percent of the Universe’s mass. He has proposed ingenious new strategies for detecting axion-like particles using observations of astronomical objects, from radio emissions of neutron stars to X-rays from white dwarfs.”
Learn more:
- Breakthrough Prize Announces 2026 Laureates
April 18, 2026 / Breakthrough Prize Foundation press release - Ben Safdi Awarded New Horizons in Physics Prize
April 18, 2026 / UC Berkeley Physics Department News
