The Henri Abraham Award was established to recognize Long Distinguished and Meritorious Service to IUPAP by people that had not been IUPAP’s President or Commission Chair. In 2020 it was named after Henri Abraham, who was IUPAP’s Secretary General for nine years, contributing selflessly to the advancement of the Union. The awardees receive a certificate of recognition and gratitude and are portrayed on the IUPAP’s website and through other communication means.

The reasons why Presidents or Chairs of Commission and Working Groups were excluded are:

• Having held such a position is in itself significant recognition of the persons contribution
• It does not put Council in the conflict of interest situation of voting to award such certificates to its own members

Long service is defined to be more than 9 years of service. Meritorious service is service recognized by the IUPAP Executive Council as having significantly helped IUPAP to achieve and sustain its mission.

Henri Abraham (1868–1943) was a French physicist who made important contributions to the science of radio waves. He performed some of the first measurements of the propagation velocity of radio waves, helped develop France’s first triode vacuum tube, and with Eugene Bloch invented the astable multivibrator. Henri Abraham contributed actively to IUPAP since its formation in 1922 and he was officially appointed as the Secretary General of IUPAP in 1934 till his death in 1943.

The call for Nominations will be open yearly and announced in the Calls for Nominations page. If you would like to nominate a candidate for this prize, please do it during the time that the call is open. Kindly include in the nomination:

• The nominee’s CV
• A note (no longer than 1 page) on how the nominee contributed to IUPAP, why those contributions are meritorious and the dates of the term of the IUPAP service rendered
• A statement signed by the nominator saying that, to the best of their knowledge, there are no concerns that IUPAP should be aware of regarding the nominee not satisfying the expectation that he/she meets the commonly held standards of professional ethics and integrity

All nominations should be complete, with all files in pdf, and emailed to: secretariat@iupap.org with subject “Henri Abraham Award” by the established deadline.