The jury received four nominations this year, two from the UK (Oxford and Bristol), one from Germany (Munich) and one from the Netherlands (Nijmegen). All nominations were excellent and well-written papers on a variety of areas in the history and philosophy of modern physics.
Unanimously, the jury decided that the winner of the prize should be rewarded to Eleanor March for the thesis Minimal coupling, the strong equivalence principle and the adaption of matter to spacetime geometry. The thesis stands out in terms of ambition, novelty, scope and philosophical significance.
On the winning thesis
This thesis explores the "geometry-dynamics debate" in spacetime theories, the question of how the laws governing matter relate to the geometry of relativistic spacetime. Written in admirably clear prose, it uses sophisticated mathematical tools to define precise conditions under which these dynamical laws are "adapted" to spacetime geometry. The work makes significant new contributions to this longstanding debate while clearly identifying the open problems that remain.
