On 26 July 2021, the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize was awarded online at the conference of the European Physical Society on High-Energy Physics (EPS-HEP 2021).

The international Borexino collaboration received the prestigious Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize of the European Physical Society in astrophysics and cosmology for breakthrough studies of solar neutrinos providing a unique and exhaustive proof of nuclear fusion reactions in the Sun in the pp chain and in the CNO cycle.

“The Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize acknowledges a 30-year history of the experiment that started in the late 1980s in the context of scientific debates caused by the topical issue of the deficit of solar neutrinos. This challenge could be solved by studying the flows of solar neutrinos at low energies,” Oleg Smirnov, a senior researcher at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, Head of the Borexino group at JINR, commented on the presentation of the award.

Interview with Oleg Smirnov on what the Borexino collaboration studies

The Borexino collaboration embraces groups of scientists from Italy, Germany, the USA, France, Russia, and Poland. The group from the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems (JINR) is one of the oldest in the collaboration and has been involved in the experiment from its discussion stage since 1991. Along with the JINR scientists, colleagues from the National Research Center “Kurchatov Institute” working at the sites in Moscow and in St. Petersburg at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute of the NRC “Kurchatov Institute” and also specialists from the Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics of Moscow State University are taking part in the Borexino project.

We congratulate all participants of the collaboration on receiving the award and wish them new bright scientific discoveries and achievements!

The Borexino collaboration team © Borexino Collaboration