I was born and educated in Milan, where I studied theoretical physics before moving to Paris and receiving a PhD in quantum physics (2002) and a PhD in philosophy (2014), both from the École Normale Supérieure. Since 2019, I work at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften of Vienna on a project funded by the French ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche) and the Austrian FWF (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung). 

Previously, I have been a postdoc researcher at the Department of Philosophy of the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris, at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Marseille, at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry of Berlin, at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften of Vienna, at the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, and at  the Federal Universities of Salvador da Bahia and Florianopolis. From 2009 to 2011 I was a visiting scholar at Stanford University with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. 

Besides working on quantum entanglement as an experimental physicist, I have published papers on the history and the philosophy of quantum mechanics, most of which deal with the so-called measurement problem. In these works, the measurement problem is not viewed as an issue to be addressed by physics, but as the emblematic representative of a class of semantic and epistemological puzzles whose dissolution has occupied philosophers of the transcendental and pragmatist tradition since Kant and Wittgenstein. 


Selected publications

Osnaghi, S., Remarks on the grammar of quantum observables.  Abstract.

Osnaghi, S., 'Measurement' vindicated. Abstract.

Osnaghi, S., Quantum subjectivism all the way down: how far does it take? Abstract.

Osnaghi, S., Bohr and the epistemological lesson of quantum mechanics. In: Freire Jr., O. (ed.), Oxford Handbook of the History of Interpretations of Quantum Physics, 797-824, Oxford University Press, 2022.

Osnaghi, S., Complementarity as a route to inferentialism. In: Faye, J. & Folse, H. J. (eds.), Bohr in the Twenty-First Century, 155-178, Bloomsbury, 2017.

Bitbol, M. & Osnaghi, S., Bohr’s complementarity and Kant’s epistemology. In: Darrigol, O., Duplantier, B., Raimond, J.-M., & Rivasseau, V. (eds.), Niels Bohr, 1913-2013, 199-221, Birkhäuser, 2015.

Osnaghi, S., Freitas, F., & Freire Jr., O., The origin of the Everettian heresy. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 40, 97-123, 2009.

Bertet, P., Osnaghi, S., Rauschenbeutel, A., Nogues, G., Auffeves, A., Brune, M., Raimond, J.-M., & Haroche, S., A Complementarity experiment with an interferometer at the quantum-classical boundary. Nature, 411, 166, 2001.

Osnaghi, S., Bertet, P., Auffeves, A., Maioli, P., Brune, M., Raimond, J.-M., & Haroche, S., Coherent control of an atomic collision in a cavity. Physical Review Letters, 87, 037902, 2001. 

Nogues, G., Rauschenbeutel, A., Osnaghi, S., Brune, M., Raimond, J.-M., & Haroche, S., Seeing a single photon without destroying it.  Nature, 400, 239, 1999.

Selected projects / collaborations

Bohr and the status of the observer

Workshop. Marseille, 2017


Anatopias. For a critique of spatial reason

Workshop & performance. Berlin, 2014


Quantum what??

Educational project. Salvador da Bahia, 2009


Tourism

Dance performance. Venezia, 2006




contact: stefano.osnaghi@gmail.com