The 2021 Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize for an outstanding contribution to Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology is awarded to the Borexino collaboration for the groundbreaking observation of solar neutrinos from the pp chain and CNO cycle that provided unique and comprehensive tests of the Sun as a nuclear fusion engine.
Borexino was approved in 1996 and began data taking in 2007. It’s a collaboration by 25 international institutes including Institute for Nuclear Research of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, running at Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy.
The Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize is one of the European Physical Society (EPS) High Energy Particle Physics Prizes. It is awarded for an outstanding contribution to Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology in the last fifteen years, in an experimental, theoretical or technological area.