The trustees are pleased to announce the Awards for Essays for 2017.

1. $4,000 – Gravity and Handedness of Photons by Ivan Agullo[1], Adrian del Rio[2], and Jose Navarro-Salas[2], [1]Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-4001, [2]Departamento de Fisica Teorica and IFIC, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia-CSIC. Facultad de Fisica, Burjassot-46100, Valencia, Spain; e-mail: agullo[AT]lsu.edu, adrian.rio[AT]uv.es, jnavarro[AT]ific.uv.es

2. $1,250 – Spacetime Has a ‘Thickness’ by Samir D. Mathur, Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210; e-mail: mathur.16[AT]osu.edu

3. $1,000 – Black Holes and Hurwitz Class Numbers by Shamit Kachru[1] and Arnav Tripathy[2], [1]Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305, [2]Department of Mathematics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; Email: skachru[AT]stanford.edu, tripathy[AT]math.harvard.edu

4. $750 – A Proof of the Weak Gravity Conjecture by Shahar Hod, The Ruppin Academic Center, Emeq Hefer 40250, Israel and The Hadassah Institute, Jerusalem 91010, Israel; e-mail: shaharhod[AT]gmail.com

5. $500 – Gravitational Wave – Gauge Field Dynamics by R. R. Caldwell[1], C. Devulder[1], and N. A. Maksimova[2], [1]Department of Physics and Astronomy, Dartmouth College, 6127 Wilder Laboratory, Hanover, NH 03755, [2]Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138; e-mail: robert.r.caldwell[AT]dartmouth.edu, christopher.devulder.gr[AT]dartmouth.edu, nina.maksimova[AT]cfa.harvard.edu

Selected for Honorable Mention this year were (listed in alphabetical order): Dharam Vir Ahluwalia; Michele Arzano and Gianluca Calcagni;Valentina Baccetti, Robert B. Mann, and Daniel R. Terno; Ning Bao, Sean M. Carroll, and Ashmeet Singh; W. Barreto, H. P. de Oliveira, and E. L. Rodrigues; John D. Barrow and Chandrima Ganguly; Spyros Basilakos, Vahid Kamali, and Ahmad Mehrabi; David Benisty and E. I. Guendelman; Pablo Bueno and Pablo A. Cano; Alexander Burinskii; F. I. Cooperstock; Maxim Eingorn, Claus Kiefer, and Alexander Zhuk; Netta Engelhardt and Sebastian Fischetti; John Estes, Michael Kavic, Matthew Lippert, and John H. Simonetti; Ricardo Z. Ferreira, McCullen Sandora, and Martin S. Sloth; Arthur E. Fischer; Antonino Flachi and Kenji Fukushima; Wen-Cong Gan and Fu-Wen Shu; Yuan K. Ha; Richard T. Hammond; Johan Hansson and Stephane Francois; Robert J. Hardwick, Vincent Vennin, and David Wands; Nader A. Inan; Nirmalya Kajuri; Archil Kobakhidze, Cyril Lagger, and Adrian Manning; Philip D. Mannheim; Elliot Nelson and C. Jess Riedel; T. Padmanabhan and Hamsa Padmanabhan; Tejinder P. Singh; C. Sivaram; Matt Visser; Asher Yahalom.

This announcement and abstracts of award-winning and honorable mention essays will be posted when ready on our web site, http:/www.gravityresearchfoundation.org. The five award-winning essays will be published in a special issue of the International Journal of Modern Physics D (IJMPD). They will also be posted at a later date on our web site.

In 2017, for our sixty-eighth competition, the trustees of the Gravity Research Foundation are offering five awards for short essays for the purpose of stimulating thought and encouraging work on gravitation. The stipulations follow.

(1) We will make these Awards on May 15, 2017 for the best well-written essays, 1500 words or fewer (excluding abstracts and excluding a small number of equations, diagrams, figures, references and tables), on the subject of gravitation, its theory, applications, or effects. 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 1250.00
The Third Award will be 1000.00
The Fourth Award will be 750.00
The Fifth Award will be 500.00

(3) Essay must be in English and e-mailed in a single PDF file before April 1, 2017. 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 essay title; authorsﾕ 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 2017 Awards for Essays on Gravitation. Pages should be numbered.

(5) The decision of the judges will be final and no reviews or comments will be provided.

(6) Please check the winnersﾕ announcement to be posted on our website: www.gravityresearchfoundation.org around May 15, 2017. We will also attempt to send all participants a general e-mail notification.

(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[AT]aol.com

Recent First Award Winners:
2016 – Stephen L. Adler, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey
2015 – Gerard ﾕt Hooft, Utrecht University and Spinoza Institute, the Netherlands
2014 – Lawrence M. Krauss, Arizona State University and Frank Wilczek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
2013 – Baocheng Zhang, Qing-yu Cai, Ming-sheng Zhan, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan and Li You, Tsinghua University, Bejing, PR China
2012 – Claus Kiefer and Manuel Kraemer, University of Cologne, Koeln, Germany
2011 – Ivan Agullo, Penn State and Leonard Parker, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
2010 – Mark Van Raamsdonk, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
2009 – Alexander Burinskii, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia
2008 – T. Padmanabhan, IUCAA, Pune, India
2007 – S. Carlip, University of California at Davis
2006 – Vijay Balasubramanian, University of Pennsylvania; Donald Marolf, University of California at Santa Barbara and Moshe Rozali, University of British Columbia
2005 – John Ellis, CERN; N. E. Mavromatos, Kingﾕs College London and D. V. Nanopoulos, Texas AandM University
2004 – Maulik Parikh, Columbia University, New York
2003 – Martin Bojowald, The Pennsylvania State University
2002 – Steven B. Giddings, University of California at Santa Barbara and Stanford University