The 2021 Balzan Prizewinners

One of the prizes  was not awarded at this time

The amount of each prize is 750,000 CHF (approximately 690,000 EUR; 815,000 USD; 590,000 GBP) for each subject area.
Half of the total amount must be used for projects that involve young researchers.

 

Milano, 13 September 2021 – The winners of the 2021 Balzan Prizes are:

 

Saul Friedländer (Israel), University of California Los Angeles, for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The 2020 Balzan Prize for Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East was not awarded at this time.

Jeffrey Gordon (USA), Washington University Saint Louis, for Microbiome in Health and DiseaseJeffrey Gordon (USA), Washington University Saint Louis, for Microbiome in Health and Disease

Alessandra Buonanno (Italy), Albert Einstein Institut, Potsdam, and Thibault Damour (France), Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques, Paris, for Gravity: Physical and Astrophysical Aspects

 

The Balzan General Prize Committee reached its decision at its annual conclusive plenary meeting, where it evaluated and selected the candidates put forward by academies, universities, and research centres around the world. The Committee based its choice on the validity, current relevance and coherence of the candidates’ research, identifying the specific factors that guarantee the advancement of knowledge in the respective fields of study.

The names of the winners were announced today in Milan by the President of the Balzan Foundation “Prize”, Alberto Quadrio-Curzio, and by the Chairman of the Balzan General Prize Committee, Luciano Maiani, during the traditional evening event held at the Fondazione Corriere della Sera.

Each winner will receive 750,000 CHF (approximately 690,000 EUR; 815,000 USD; 519,000 GBP), half of which must be invested in research. Since 2001, the rules and regulations of the General Prize Committee stipulate that the Prizewinners must use half of the amount of their prize to finance research carried out by young researchers.

Every year, four new subject areas are chosen from these two broad categories: literature, moral sciences, and the arts; and physical, mathematical and natural sciences, and medicine. This rotation of subject areas makes it possible to give precedence to new or emerging lines of research, and to support important areas of study that might be overlooked by other major international awards.

In its sixty years of existence, the Balzan Prize has come full circle in recognizing all fields of knowledge, thus achieving the Foundation’s goal – as stated in the rules and regulations – of fostering culture, the sciences and the most meritorious humanitarian initiatives, regardless of nationality, race or creed.

After announcing the winners of the 2021 Balzan Prizes, the Chairman of the General Prize Committee, Luciano Maiani, announced the subject areas for 2022:

■ Moral Philosophy

■ Ethnomusicology

■ Biomaterials for nanomedicine and tissue engineering

■ Glaciation and ice-sheet dynamics

 

In 2022, the amount of each Balzan Prize will be 750,000 CHF.