Guido Tonelli, CMS Spokesperson during 2010–2011, was awarded the prestigious Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physics Society, along with other LHC scientists from Italy.

The prize was established in 2001 to commemorate Fermi on the occasion of his birth centenary and is awarded yearly to one or more Members of the Society for their contributions to physics. Previous awardees include Giorgio Parisi, Nicola Cabibbo, Luciano Maiani, Raoul Gatto, Gabriele Veneziano, Bruno Zumino, Sergio Ferrara, Antonio Zichichi, Ettore Fiorini and Italo Mannelli among others.

The Society awarded the prize "to Guido Tonelli for the discovery, with the CMS experiment, of a new fundamental particle with mass around 125 GeV and properties consistent with a Higgs boson, theoretically predicted almost 50 years ago, the existence of which ensures a huge insight in the understanding of the Standard Model of particle physics". It will be formally presented during the Opening Ceremony of the 99th National Congress of the Society at Trieste, Italy on 23 September.