The Fermi telescope is awarded the 2025 EPS-HEPP Prize
The European Physical Society’s High Energy and Particle Physics Division has awarded the “Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize” to the Fermi-LAT and Fermi-GBM collaborations, “for revolutionizing gamma-ray astronomy and multimessenger astrophysics”. The prize was awarded at the 2025 European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics, held in Marseille this July.
The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is a gamma-ray observatory launched on June 11, 2008. With its two instruments (the Gamma-Ray Burst Monitor, GBM, and the Large Area Telescope, LAT) detects gamma rays in the energy range from ~30 keV to more than 300 GeV.
“I believe this prize acknowledges the impact of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope had on the high-energy astrophysics community since 2008″, according to Riccardo Rando, local coordinator of the Fermi INFN-PD team. “Just to name a few items, Fermi has discovered more than 300 gamma-ray pulsars, including the first one found beyond our galaxy. Fermi data revealed a new large-scale component of our galaxy known as the Fermi Bubbles, a structure that extends across 50,000 light years originating from the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Fermi observed the first light ever seen from an event with detected gravitational waves”.
The Fermi INFN team in Padova has been active since the early 2000’s. It took part to the construction and calibration effort of the LAT, together with the other INFN teams and national and international partners, and has contributed to the LAT’s operation, calibration, and scientific analysis, and in particular to the study of the emission from the core of Active Galaxies.
