The Foundational Questions Institute, styled FQXi, is an organization that provides grants to "catalyze, support, and disseminate research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology."About the Foundational Questions Institute
/ref> It was founded in 2005 by cosmologists

Max Tegmark Max Erik Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a scienti ...

and

Anthony Aguirre Anthony Aguirre is a theoretical cosmologist. Aguirre is a professor and holds the Faggin Presidential Chair for the Physics of Information at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the co-founder and associate scientific director of the ...

, who hold the positions of Scientific Directors. It has run four worldwide grant competitions (in 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2013), the first of which provided US$2M to 30 projects. It also runs yearly essay contests open to the general public with $40,000 in prizes awarded by a jury panel and the best texts published in book format. FQXi is an independent, philanthropically funded non-profit organization, run by scientists for scientists, with a Scientific Advisory Board including John Barrow,

Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom ( ; sv, Niklas Boström ; born 10 March 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and the rev ...

Gregory Chaitin Gregory John Chaitin ( ; born 25 June 1947) is an Argentine-American mathematician and computer scientist. Beginning in the late 1960s, Chaitin made contributions to algorithmic information theory and metamathematics, in particular a computer-t ...

David Chalmers David John Chalmers (; born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York Universi ...

Alan Guth Alan Harvey Guth (; born February 27, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory (and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe). He is Victor Weisskopf Professor of ...

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 23 June 1942) is a British cosmologist and astrophysicist. He is the fifteenth Astronomer Royal, ...

Eva Silverstein Eva Silverstein (born October 24, 1970) is an American theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and string theorist. She is a professor of physics at Stanford University and director of the Modern Inflationary Cosmology collaboration within the Simon ...

Lee Smolin Lee Smolin (; born June 6, 1955) is an American theoretical physicist, a faculty member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo and a member of the graduate faculty of the ...

, and

Frank Wilczek Frank Anthony Wilczek (; born May 15, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician and Nobel laureate. He is currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Founding Direct ...

.Who is FQXi?
/ref> The $6.2 million seed funding was donated by the

John Templeton Foundation The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a philanthropic organization that reflects the ideas of its founder, John Templeton, who became wealthy via a career as a contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in religious an ...

, whose goal is to reconcile science and religion. Tegmark has stated that the money came with "no strings attached"; The ''

Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'' stated FQXi is run by "two well-respected researchers who say they are not religious. The institute's scientific advisory board is also filled with top scientists." Critics of the John Templeton Foundation such as Sean Carroll have also stated they were satisfied that the FQXi is independent.

Notable members

FQXi members include *

Scott Aaronson Scott Joel Aaronson (born May 21, 1981) is an American theoretical computer scientist and David J. Bruton Jr. Centennial Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. His primary areas of research are quantum computing an ...

Yakir Aharonov Yakir Aharonov ( he, יקיר אהרונוב; born August 28, 1932) is an Israeli physicist specializing in quantum physics. He has been a Professor of Theoretical Physics and the James J. Farley Professor of Natural Philosophy at Chapman Univer ...

* John Carlos Baez *

Julian Barbour Julian Barbour (; born 1937) is a British physicist with research interests in quantum gravity and the history of science. Since receiving his PhD degree on the foundations of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity at the University o ...

John D. Barrow John David Barrow (29 November 1952 – 26 September 2020) was an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He served as Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College from 2008 to 2011. Barrow was also a writer of pop ...

Jacob Biamonte Jacob Daniel Biamonte (born January 22, 1979) is an American physicist and theoretical computer scientist active in the fields of quantum information theory and quantum computing. He is currently a professor at the Skolkovo Institute of Science ...

Raphael Bousso Raphael Bousso () (born 1971) is a theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He is a professor at the Berkeley Center for Theoretical Physics in the Department of Physics, UC Berkeley. He is known for the Bousso bound on the information content of t ...

* Sean Carroll *

Paul Davies Paul Charles William Davies (born 22 April 1946) is an English physicist, writer and broadcaster, a professor in Arizona State University and Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science. He is affiliated with the Institute ...

David Deutsch David Elieser Deutsch ( ; born 18 May 1953) is a British physicist at the University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Atomic and Laser Physics at the Centre for Quantum Computation (CQC) in the Clarendon Laboratory of ...

George F. R. Ellis George Francis Rayner Ellis, FRS, Hon. FRSSAf (born 11 August 1939), is the emeritus distinguished professor of complex systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He co-auth ...

Nicolas Gisin Nicolas Gisin (born 1952) is a Swiss physicist and professor at the University of Geneva working on the foundations of quantum mechanics, and quantum information and communication. His work includes both experimental and theoretical physics. He ...

Brian Greene Brian Randolph Greene (born February 9, 1963) is a American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist. Greene was a physics professor at Cornell University from 19901995, and has been a professor at Columbia University since 1 ...

Sabine Hossenfelder Sabine Hossenfelder (born 1976) is a German theoretical physicist, author, musician and YouTuber. She is currently employed as a research fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. She is the author of ''Lost in Math: How Beauty Le ...

Robert Lawrence Kuhn Robert Lawrence Kuhn (born November 6, 1944) is a public intellectual, international corporate strategist and investment banker. He has been called “one of the Western world’s most prolific interpreters of Beijing’s policies.” Outside C ...

Seth Lloyd Seth Lloyd (born August 2, 1960) is a professor of mechanical engineering and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research area is the interplay of information with complex systems, especially quantum systems. He has perform ...

George Musser George Musser (born 1965) is a contributing editor for ''Scientific American'' magazine in New York and the author of ''The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory'' and of ''Spooky Action at a Distance''. Biography Musser did his undergraduate ...

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...

Lisa Randall Lisa Randall (born June 18, 1962) is an American theoretical physicist working in particle physics and cosmology. She is the Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science on the physics faculty of Harvard University. Her research includes the funda ...

Carlo Rovelli Carlo Rovelli (born May 3, 1956) is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in France. He is also currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute, and c ...

Leonard Susskind Leonard Susskind (; born June 16, 1940)his 60th birthday was celebrated with a special symposium at Stanford University.in Geoffrey West's introduction, he gives Suskind's current age as 74 and says his birthday was recent. is an American physicis ...

Gerard 't Hooft Gerardus (Gerard) 't Hooft (; born July 5, 1946) is a Dutch theoretical physicist and professor at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. He shared the 1999 Nobel Prize in Physics with his thesis advisor Martinus J. G. Veltman "for elucidating the ...

Vlatko Vedral Vlatko Vedral is a Serbian-born (and naturalised British citizen) physicist and Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford. Until the summer of 2022 he also held a joint appointmen ...

Steven Weinberg Steven Weinberg (; May 3, 1933 – July 23, 2021) was an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interactio ...

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Qua ...

Wojciech Zurek Wojciech Hubert Zurek ( pl, Żurek; born 1951) is a theoretical physicist and a leading authority on quantum theory, especially decoherence and non-equilibrium dynamics of symmetry breaking and resulting defect generation (known as the Kibble–Zu ...

References

External links

Institute website
{{Authority control Physics organizations