The reaction 16 O͑e, e 0 pp͒ has been studied at a transferred four-momentum ͑v, jqj͒ ͑210 MeV, 300 MeV͞c͒. Evidence has been obtained for direct knockout of proton pairs from the 1p shell. The excitation-energy spectrum of the residual nucleus and the missing-momentum densities indicate that knockout of a 1 S 0 pair dominates the reaction, while there is also a noticeable contribution from knockout of 3 P pairs. [S0031-9007(97) The description of short-range correlations (SRC) in complex nuclei is a long-standing problem in many-body physics. These correlations account for the effects of the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction at short distance and require a description of the dynamics of nucleons bound in a nuclear system that goes beyond the meanfield approach. Recently, several microscopic calculations of the momentum distribution of nucleons have been performed, both for nuclear matter [1][2][3] and nuclei [4,5], starting from realistic NN interactions. These calculations indicate that, due to the strong repulsive part of the NN force at short range, nucleons can scatter to energies and momenta far above the Fermi energy and momentum.If a nucleon of a strongly correlated pair is knocked out from a nucleus, e.g., after absorption of a virtual photon, the residual A 2 1 nucleus is likely to be left in a state with large excitation energy and momentum. As a consequence, the other nucleon may be emitted as well, which implies that information on SRC in nuclei can be obtained from studies of the semi-exclusive ͑e, e 0 N͒ reaction at large missing energy and momentum [6,7], or from the exclusive ͑e, e 0 NN͒ reaction. The latter reaction is expected to provide the most direct information on the effects of SRC, since in the plane wave impulse approximation (PWIA) its cross section is determined by the correlations in the relative wave function of the nucleon pair. Moreover, the identity of both emitted particles is determined, and the final state is well defined if the residual A 2 2 nucleus is left in its ground state or a low-lying excited state.Beyond PWIA, electromagnetically induced twonucleon knockout may also arise from coupling to mesonexchange currents (MEC) or result from D-excitation with subsequent decay via a DN ! NN reaction. Since SRC, MEC, and D-excitation contribute in a different way to the ͑e, e 0 pn͒ and ͑e, e 0 pp͒ reactions, these reactions are expected to yield complementary information on the different processes that contribute to the cross section.0031-9007͞97͞78(26)͞4893(5)$10.00