Laura M Ruetsche

Ruetsche contributed to philosophy of science, especially philosophy of quantum physics. She initially gained fame for her novel and profound criticisms of the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics. In a powerful series of papers, she demonstrated, among other difficulties, that the modal interpretation fails even when measurements are perfectly precise, and that it cannot work for quantum systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom-the object of study of quantum field theories. Her book, Interpreting Quantum Theories (2013) which won the Lakatos Award, demonstrates that there is no single interpretation of Quantum Field Theory that captures all of the successes of the theory in all the domains in which it has been applied, including particle physics, cosmology, black hole thermodynamics, and solid state physics.