all papers
Jeffrey I. Gordon
An update on Gordon’s project to develop culturally acceptable, affordable, and scalable treatments for undernourished Bangladeshi children. His team has revealed a causal link between gut microbiome development, systems physiology and healthy growth.
Originally set to end in 2022, Eva Kondorosi’s Balzan Research Project continues to support students through training, mentoring, and scholarships. It also helps young researchers attend conferences, give lectures, and conduct fieldwork.
Technology to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere is now available. Senne Starckx describes two methods in use, direct air capture (DAC) and metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), the latter earning Omar Yaghi the 2024 Balzan Prize and a share of the 2025 Nobel Prize.
David Damrosch
Considering literary ecology as an ecosystem that has evolved over two centuries, Damrosch examines its connection with ecology and evolutionary theory, going back to the origins of the disciplines of comparative philology and comparative literature.
Marco Ferrari
How many species of humans were there in prehistoric times? In tackling this question, Ferrari presents theories of human evolution, showing that we, Homo sapiens, are unique and alone – the last survivors of an evolutionary “bush” that once had a wealth of species.
Michaël Gillon
An update on Gillon’s Balzan Project, a major contribution to the success of SPECULOOS (Search for habitable Planets EClipsing UltracOOl Stars) and to the study of the diversity of rocky exoplanets orbiting very low-mass stars and their potential habitability.
Luca Sciortino
In his interview with Prizewinner Lorraine Daston (2024 History of Science), Luca Sciortino explores the central questions of her work, illustrating her vision of the history of science while expanding and clarifying some of her research findings to shed light on problems that afflict humanity today.
Joan Martínez Alier
Martínez Alier reflects on four decades of work in ecological economics, comparative and statistical political ecology, and environmental justice, highlighting the Atlas of Environmental Justice (www.ejatlas.org), his primary focus over the past ten years.
Willerslev’s Balzan Research Project addresses the computational challenges posed by vast databases of sequence data, aiming to improve both the speed and accuracy of taxonomic assignments of environmental DNA and ancient DNA.
Francesco Ranci
Can democratic societies resist authoritarian opposition without becoming authoritarian themselves? Ranci revisits Plato’s account of Socrates’ death against the backdrop of Athenian democracy and wonders about democracy’s fate in today’s globalized world.
Senne Starckx
The momentous detection of gravitational waves (ripples in spacetime caused when two black holes merge) by laser interferometers and the subsequent finds of second-generation detectors have paved the way for the proposed third-generation Einstein Telescope.
Jean-Jacques Hublin
Homo sapiens’ evolution in northwestern Africa is explored by applying cutting-edge analytic methods to records from Moroccan cave sites and working with local researchers to recon-struct anatomy, technology, diet and symbolism; all findings to be on open access.
Law and rights 
Arts