Acceptance speech: 18th Frontiers of Knowledge Awards in Basic Sciences

Acceptance speech by Allan MacDonald, winner of the 2025 Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Basic Sciences, who was honored alongside Pablo Jarillo-Herrero for their pioneering work on the theoretical foundations and discovery of strongly correlated electrons in stacked and twisted monolayer materials.

MacDonald highlights the value of fundamental research as a driver of unpredictable discoveries and explains how moiré materials make it possible to design new quantum behaviors by stacking and twisting atomic layers. He also emphasizes their potential to address some of the major challenges in materials physics and underlines that the frontier of knowledge is constantly shifting as new questions arise.