2024

We are announcing the 2024 Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations and are looking forward to receiving your nominations by November 15, 2024.

The Paul Ehrenfest Best Paper Award for Quantum Foundations recognizes outstanding and influential research contributions to the foundations of quantum physics. The award aims to raise awareness for the quantum foundations field and draw attention to new and interesting achievements in this area without delay. It is awarded for the most significant paper in the foundations of quantum physics, theoretical or experimental, published in a peer-reviewed journal in the five calendar years before the prize call (i.e., this year, we will accept submissions published between January 1st, 2019, and December 31st, 2023). Other than that, papers from all areas in the foundations of quantum physics and by authors of any background will be eligible for the award.

For the detailed rules, please visit this website: https://www.iqoqi-vienna.at/news-events/ehrenfest-award.

Last year's prize was awarded jointly to

• Časlav Brukner for his paper A no-go theorem for observer-independent facts, Entropy 20, 350, (2018)
• Daniela Frauchiger and Renato Renner for their paper Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself, Nature Communications 9, 3711 (2018)
• Kok-Wei Bong, Aníbal Utreras-Alarcón, Farzad Ghafari, Yeong-Cherng Liang, Nora Tischler, Eric G. Cavalcanti, G. J. Pryde, and H. M. Wiseman, A strong no-go theorem on the Wigner’s friend paradox, Nature Physics 16, 1199–1205 (2020)

Nominations and self-nominations for the present call are to include a copy of the nominated publication and a short (2-3 paragraph) statement of the relevance of the contribution. In the case of single-author publications, the name and contact information of the author are to be given. In the case of multi-author publications, a representative author who will officially accept the Ehrenfest Award in person shall be named with their contact information. Consent from all authors as to which author will serve as the representative for the publication shall be obtained by the nominator, and a short confirmation to that effect should be included with the nomination.

The 2024 selection committee consists of:

• Philip Goyal, State University of New York at Albany, USA
• Lucien Hardy, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada
• Renato Renner, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
• Urbasi Sinha, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India
• Peter Asenbaum, IQOQI Vienna, Austria

Peter Asenbaum will coordinate the selection process at IQOQI Vienna. For inquiries, please contact peter.asenbaum(at)oeaw.ac.at.