“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the answer, I would spend the first 55 minutes figuring out the proper questions to ask. For if I knew the proper questions, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes."  

INQUIRY    PRIZE   are questions important?  

Albert Einstein

 Powerful and  long  lived,  create  complexity,  technology  and  progress  

Curiosity.Creativity.Honesty.Knowledge. =>More curiosity    

INQUIRY    PRIZE why  ques+ons  are important  

 

2,500  years  

INQUIRY  PRIZE  

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” "The important thing is not to stop questioning.” - Albert Einstein

"Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.”

­ Voltaire (… and a woman too!)

"Ask the right questions if you're going to find the right answers.”

- Vanessa Redgrave

"We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” ­ Bono

Curiosity. Creativity. Honesty. Knowledge.

 

are questions really important?    

 If  A=B      and    B=C    then  A=C  

  How  do  we  all  know  this (?)

 

inspired by Jim Smurro’s question (personal communications): “How do we know?” and Costas Drossos’ question (Researchgate.org) : “What is the role of intuition in scientific knowledge”

Distribu5on  of  energy  in  response  to  an  expanding  universe:  does  new  energy  appear    To  fill  in  gaps  or  does  the  total  gets  spread  so  thin  that  “holes”  may  appear?    

Outer space is deemed cold and devoid of matter. How can “nothingness” have the ability to be cold?

     

Trust  your  logic,  ask  "How do we know?"    

If  the  answer  is  “the  math  is  too  complex  for  you”  …we  don’t  get  it  either  

"Curiosity. Creativity. Honesty. Knowledge: How Do We Know?"

Andreas Mershin, quantum physicist who leads the Label Free research group [“ignoring the boundaries between physics, biology and materials

science”] at MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms, is co-founder and director of the Molecular Frontiers Inquiry Prize [MFIP].

The MFIP is the world’s first prize rewarding questions rather than answers, recognizing the critical role of curiosity in the scientific process as well as

the value of skilled inquisitiveness in all aspects of modern life.

Each year, five girls and five boys win the MFIP for asking the most insightful and thought-provoking scientific questions [aka the "Nobel Prize for

kids".] Their entries are judged by a jury selected from the MFIP's scientific advisory board consisting of world-leading scientists including thirteen

Nobel laureates [along with Craig Venter, Bob Langer and George Whitesides.]

In May 2014 two colleagues from MIT, Bob Langer and Ed Boyden, accompanied Andreas to Stockholm, where they presented during the MFIP

conference, The Brain: Achievements & Challenges, at the Royal Swedish Academy.

During the MFIP Awards ceremony, Andreas Mershin identified twenty-one

scientists and passionately curious individuals by name.

Only two received a double shout-out. One of them is dead [Albert Einstein].

1. Albert Einstein 2. Vanessa Redgrave 3. Voltaire 4. Bono 5. Albert Einstein 6. Democritus 7. Jurgen Schmidhuber 8. Beau Lotto 9. Min Jeong Kang 10. Ilias Tagkopoulos 11. Y.C. Liu 12. Saeed Tavazoie 13. Jim Smurro 14. Costas Drossos 15. Keiji Nagano 16. Elizabeth Ball 17. Helena Ledmyr 18. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 19. Charles Darwin 20. Jim Smurro 21. Edwin Hubble