The Foundational Questions Institute, styled FQxI (formerly 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, machine learning researcher and author. He is best known for his book ''Life 3.0'' about what the world might look like as artificial intelligence continues to improve. Tegmark i ...

and Anthony Aguirre. It is currently run by chief scientific officer David Sloan and chief operating officer Kavita Rajanna. Best known for it
Zenith Grants
program, FQxI has awarded 234 grants in ten grant rounds since 2006, totaling $27M. Sample grant round topics include the Nature of Time (2010), Physics of Information (2013), Physics of the Observer (2016), Agency in the Physical World (2018), and Information as Fuel (2019). It also runs frequent 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. FQxI has been funded by a variety of individual donors and institutes since its inception, most notably the

John Templeton Foundation The John Templeton Foundation (Templeton Foundation) is a Philanthropy, philanthropic organization founded by John Templeton in 1987. Templeton became wealthy as a Contrarian investing, contrarian investor, and wanted to support progress in relig ...

, Fetzer Institute, The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation, and Templeton World Charity Foundation. The $6.2 million seed funding was donated by the

, 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,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

'' 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

All FQXi members are listed on its website. Five FQxI Members are awardees of the

Nobel Prize in Physics The Nobel Prize in Physics () is an annual award given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for those who have made the most outstanding contributions to mankind in the field of physics. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the ...

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 t ...

Anthony Leggett Sir Anthony James Leggett (born 26 March 1938) is a British–American theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Leggett is widely recognised as a world leader in the theory of low-temp ...

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

Roger Penrose Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, Philosophy of science, philosopher of science and Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics i ...

, and

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 Qu ...

. FQxI's Scientific Advisory Council "shares a wide range of expertise on FQxI’s scientific programs and helps with scientific planning."https://fqxi.org/about-us/our-team/ The council members are: *

Jim Al-Khalili Jameel Sadik "Jim" Al-Khalili (; born 20 September 1962) is an Iraqi-British theoretical physicist and science populariser. He is professor of theoretical physics and chair in the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He is a ...

Adam Brown
*

Jeremy Butterfield Jeremy Nicholas Butterfield FBA (born 23 December 1954) is a philosopher at the University of Cambridge, noted particularly for his work on philosophical aspects of quantum theory, relativity theory and classical mechanics. Biography Butterfie ...

* Sean Carroll *

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

* Bob Coecke
Lidia del Rio

Joshua Deutsch
* George F. R. Ellis * Surya Ganguli *

Alan Guth Alan Harvey Guth (; born February 27, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is the Victor Weisskopf Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Along with Alexei Starobinsky and Andrei Linde, ...

* Jenann Ismael *

Robert Lawrence Kuhn Robert Lawrence Kuhn (born November 6, 1944) is an American public intellectual and investment banker. He is also an author, TV-producer, columnist and commentator, especially on topics related to China. Kuhn is the creator of the PBS series ''C ...

* Fotini Markopoulou *

Hiranya Peiris Hiranya Vajramani Peiris is a British astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge, where she holds the Professorship of Astrophysics (1909). She is best known for her work on the cosmic microwave background radiation, and interdisciplinary link ...

* Chanda Prescod-Weinstein *

Martin Rees Martin John Rees, Baron Rees of Ludlow,