Cocconi Prize
biennial European astrophysics and cosmology award (2011–)
The Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize is awarded by the High Energy and Particle Physics Division (EPS-HEPP) of the European Physical Society (EPS) to commemorate the two Italian physicists. The Prize is awarded biennially for outstanding experimental, theoretical or technological contribution to astroparticle physics and cosmology.
The prize is awarded during the EPS conference on high-energy physics, together with the other prizes awarded by EPS-HEPP: High Energy and Particle Physics Prize, the Gribov Medal, the Young Experimental Physicist Prize and the Outreach Prize.
The Cocconi Prize is the EPS’ highest honor in astroparticle physics and is comparable in prestige to the American Astronomical Society’s Rossi Prize. In 2017, Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne, and Barry Barish received the Nobel Prize in physics few months after they had got the Cocconi Prize. The same applies to Art McDonald, who received the Cocconi Prize in 2013 and two years later the Nobel Prize.
The prize was established in 2011 when the estate of Giuseppe Cocconi and Vanna Tongiorgi Cocconi, prominent italian physicists with outstanding career in cosmic rays and at CERN (Giuseppe Cocconi was research director from 1967 to 1969), donated for the creation of a prize in the area of particle astrophysics and cosmology.
Nominations for the award may be submitted through an open call for nominations issued by the EPS-HEPP, usually in January of odd years. Selection of the prize recipients will be made by the division and proposed to the president of the EPS, who will officially announce the name(s) of the winner(s).
Recipients
2025, Fermi-LAT and Fermi-GBM collaborations, "for revolutionizing the field of gamma-ray astronomy, providing the detection and catalogs of thousands of new gamma-ray sources including pulsars, the first detection of an electromagnetic counterpart to a neutrino IceCube event, the identification of more than two thousand gamma ray bursts, and the first detection of the electromagnetic counterpart to the gravitational wave event GW170817 from the merger of two neutron stars".
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