Physics Award of the OePG

General Conditions for the Fritz Kohlrausch and Ludwig Boltzmann Award, respectively

(supplemented and established in the board meeting on January 18, 2016)

The General Assembly of the Austrian Physical Society (OePG) on September 22, 1953 in Innsbruc established the Physics Award of the OePG with the aim of supporting young scientists. This award is to be given at a maximum of once a year, alternatingly as Fritz Kohlrausch Award for experimental and as Ludwig Boltzmann Award for theoretical work. The prize will be given for an excellent scientific paper or a series of thematically closely related papers from all parts of physics, which as a rule should have appeared during the two calendar years preceding the year of the award. The paper should either contain the development of a new methodology or contain fundamentally new results based on established methods (applying stricter standards than those used for dissertations). This implies that the awardee needs to have obtained a Ph.D. and should hold either a postdoc or junior researcher position. The work described in the paper has to be primarily performed by the awardee himself / herself, where appropriate a statement of the awardee or of his / her co-authors is necessary explaining the awardee's contribution.

Eligible for the Physics Award are persons who have not concluded their 40^th year of life at the date of the application deadline. Maternal or paternal leave up to 6 months per child can be taken into account if proved. Professors and heads of institutes are explicitly excluded. Awardees must be members of the Austrian Physical Society.

Any member of the OePG may nominate a person and her / his work for the Physics Award, with the exception of the awardee herself / himself. The nomination must comply with the implementation rules below. The board of the OePG decides on the nomination with a majority of votes.

According to the protocol of the board meeting on December 5, 1953, the award certificate must state that the award has been funded by the membership fees of the OePG members. The first Physics Award was awarded at the General Assembly 1955 in Vienna.

The Physics Award is currently endowed with 3,000 Euro.

Implementation Rules for the Physics Award

(supplemented and established in the board meeting on January 18, 2016)

1. The nomination must be submitted electronically by e-mail to the president and the manager of the OePG (office@oepg.at). The nomination itself and all supplement (with the exception outlined in (4)) must be in English. With regard to the subsequent expert assessment, the complete nomination with all supplements (see (3) and (4)) should fit into an e-mail with a maximum size of 10 Mbytes (limit of some mail systems!). The use of repositories on the web with limited access (e.g. Dropbox) should be avoided if possible.
2. The Physics Award may be given for a single publication or a series of thematically closely related publications.
3. The most important publications, a publication list and a curriculum vitae of the nominee must be enclosed with the nomination. The publications specific for the nomination must be suitably highlighted.
4. The nomination must comprise an abstract in English of the work for which the award should be given and (for the certificate) a short description (two lines maximum) in German and English.
5. The work to be awarded should have preferably been carried out, at least to a major degree, at an Austrian research institution and should have an obvious relation to Austrian physics.
6. The work nominated in year x should have been published during the calendar years x-2 and x-1. In case the nomination comprises several publications, a maximum of one of them should have appeared in print during year x-3, or submitted before the end of year x-1.
7. The work must have been done to a large degree by the nominee herself / himself. The nominee must have substantially contributed to its planning and execution. A statement of the nominee relating to this matter is required. It is up to the OePG board to obtain private statements from one or more of the co-authors.
8. A reporter nominated by the OePG board from its members obtains, if possible, two expert opinions on the nominations. Comparing reports on nominees with comparative fields of work are preferable. The referees receive the nominations and the supplements specified in (3) and (4) (abstract, electronic versions of the most important publications and those to be awarded, publication list and curriculum vitae). In specific cases additional information required for an assessment of the work may be added; the decision on this is up to the reporter after consultation with the president.
9. Only one paper in the sense of (2), i.e., a single publication or a series of thematically closely related publications, can be taken into account for one nominee.
10. In case a nomination does not comply with the above rules, the person who has issued the nomination must be given the chance to adapt the nomination accordingly. If several persons nominate the same awardee they should be invited to create a joint nomination.
11. The reporter in conjunction with the president can carry out the required modifications if the efforts in (10) fail, or otherwise reject the nomination. In the case of several nominations of the same person they may decide which of the nominations should be further pursued if a joint nomination failed.
12. The president in conjunction with the reporter decides on the interpretation of these implementation rules. In case of doubt they may obtain the opinions of the board members if time permits.