“For pioneering work on large-scale ultra-low-background detectors, specifically Borexino, measuring the complete spectroscopy of solar neutrinos, culminating in observation of CNO neutrinos, thus experimentally proving operation of all the nuclear energy driving reactions of stellar evolution.” This is the citation from the American Physical Society in according today (11 October) the Hans A. Bethe prize to Frank Calaprice of Princeton University, one of the “fathers”, together with Gianpaolo Bellini, of the Borexino experiment at the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories. The Bethe Prize constitutes a prestigious recognition of the essential role that Calaprice had in the design, establishment, and conducting of the experiment that, during its more than ten years of scientific activity, conquered an unequalled record of radiopurity, thus making, thanks to this essential characteristic, fundamental discoveries about the operation of stars, studying solar neutrinos.
The Bethe Prize is thus added to the other important recognitions obtained by Borexino and its scientific community: the Bruno Pontecorvo Prize awarded in 2016 by JINR (the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research of Dubna) to Gianpaolo Bellini; the Enrico Fermi Award of the Italian Physical Society, again to Gianpaolo Bellini the following year; and the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize awarded by the European Physical Society to the whole scientific collaboration of the Borexino experiment in 2021.
