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The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences made its announcement of the last week, based on scientific breakthroughs that have revolutionized thinking about some of the smallest known particles in the universe, neutrinos.

What wasn’t apparent at the time, however, was the foundational work at the University of Hawaii. Manoa, that contributed to the breakthrough or the connections of the prize winners, Arthur B. McDonald of Queen’s University in Canada and Takaaki Kajita of the University of Tokyo, to research and colleagues at UH.

UH announced Tuesday that McDonald, a retired, emeritus faculty member at Queens, has been an affiliate physics faculty member at UH for six years.

“In fact, Professor McDonald is scheduled to return to campus in early 2016, when he will continue his work with the and, hopefully, will participate in a Nobel Prize celebration and possible public lecture,” said UH Manoa Chancellor

“We join the world in congratulating the Nobel winners and our .”

Kajita’s neutrino research was conducted in large part at the Super-Kamiokande particle detector in Tokyo with a team of more than 100 collaborators. UH Physics professor John Learned conducted some of the earliest analysis of the Super-Kamiokande work, and UH Ph.D. student John Flanagan wrote his doctoral dissertation on the research — the first dissertation centered on the neutrino studies.

Six other UH faculty members — notably professor Sandip Pakvasa and others connected to the High Energy Physics Group and a faculty group focused on nanoparticles — have been involved or connected to the Super-Kamiokande work, according to UH.

MacDonald, whose work at the Sudbury Neutrino Obersvatory 14 years ago demonstrated the ability of neutrinos produced in the core of the sun to change identities over their travel to Earth, called out the importance of the work of UH physicists in Tuesday’s announcement.

“It’s an honor for us in the SNO collaboration to share the Nobel Prize with the Super-Kamiokande collaboration in which my colleagues at the University of Hawaii have played such a major role,” said McDonald. “I enjoy discussing physics with and learning from the UH experimental and theoretical particle physicists.”

The Nobel Committee attributed the award to MacDonald and Kajita for their “key contributions to the experiments which demonstrated that neutrinos change identities. This metamorphosis requires that neutrinos have mass. The discovery has changed our understanding of the innermost workings of matter and can prove crucial to our view of the universe.”

The Nobel Prize in Physics is one of awarded each year, the others offered in chemistry, literature, physiology or medicine and peace.