2025 Awards for Essays on Gravitation

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In 2025, for our seventy-sixth competition, the trustees of the Gravity Research Foundation are offering five awards for short essays for stimulating thought and encouraging work on the phenomenon of gravitation. The stipulations follow:

  1. We will make these Awards on May 15, 2025, for the best and most well-written essays about gravitation, its theory, applications, or effects. Essays must be 10 pages or fewer using double-spacing, single column, 12-point font and 1-inch margins including a small number of diagrams, tables, and equations. Title and reference pages are additional and not included in the page count. The subject matter may or may not be original research. The essay competition is not intended to replace a research journal where the detailed results of original research are submitted. Essays should not give lengthy detailed mathematical calculations nor detailed descriptions of an experimental setup. Essay ideas should be self- contained and understandable - not dependent on reading other documents.

  2. The First Award will be $4000.00
    The Second Award will be $700.00
    The Third Award will be $600.00
    The Fourth Award will be $500.00
    The Fifth Award will be $400.00

  3. Essay must be typed in English and e-mailed in a single PDF file by March 31, 2025. One essay only will be accepted from each author. Notify us within 24 hours if you do not receive an e-mail confirmation of your submission.

  4. Title page should include all the following: essay title, authors’ names (specify corresponding author), e-mail and mailing addresses, submission date, an abstract of 125 words or fewer, and the statement: “Essay written for the Gravity Research Foundation 2025 Awards for Essays on Gravitation.” Pages should be numbered.

  5. The decision of the judges will be final. No reviews or comments will be provided.

  6. Contestants can find the awards announcement posted on our website: gravityresearchfoundation.org around May 15, 2025.

  7. The five award-winning essays will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (IJMPD). Authors of essays designated Honorable Mention will be invited to submit their essays to the IJMPD where these may undergo additional refereeing at editorial discretion for possible publication. Authors of all other essays are free and encouraged to publish their essays after May 15th.

Submission e-mail address: George M. Rideout, Jr., President (grideoutjr@aol.com)

Recent First Award Winners:

2024 – Tom Banks, Rutgers University, NJ and Willy Fischler, University of Texas, TX
2023 – Maciej Dunajski, University of Cambridge, UK
2022 – Cenalo Vaz, University of Cincinnati, OH
2021 – Samir D. Mathur, The Ohio State University, OH
2020 – Maulik Parikh and George Zahariade, Arizona State University, AZ and Frank Wilczek, Arizona State University, AZ,
Stockholm University, Sweden, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
2019 – Alessio Belenchia, Queen’s University, England; Robert M. Wald, Enrico Fermi Institute, IL; Flaminia Giacomini, Esteban
Castro-Ruiz, Časlav Brukner and Markus Aspelmeyer, Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austria
2018 – Jessica Santiago and Matt Visser, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
2017 – Ivan Agullo, Louisiana State University, LA; Adrian del Rio and Jose Navarro-Salas, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia-
CSIC, Spain 
2016 – Stephen L. Adler, Institute for Advanced Study, New Jersey
2015 – Gerard ’t Hooft, Utrecht University and Spinoza Institute, the Netherlands
2014 – Lawrence M. Krauss, Arizona State University, AZ and Frank Wilczek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
2013 – Baocheng Zhang, Qing-yu Cai and Ming-sheng Zhan, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China and Li You, Tsinghua             
University, China
2012 – Claus Kiefer and Manuel Krämer, University of Cologne, Germany
2011 – Ivan Agullo, Pennsylvania State University, PA and Leonard Parker, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI 
2010 – Mark Van Raamsdonk, University of British Columbia, BC