The recipient of the 2025 International Prize for Biology, this year given in the field of Neurobiology, is HFSP grant alumnus Giacomo Rizzolatti, Emeritus Professor, Full Professor of Human Physiology – University of Parma, Italy.
The International Prize for Biology, instituted in April 1985 by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, commemorates the sixty-year reign of Emperor Showa and his longtime devotion to biological research and also to offer tribute to His Majesty the Emperor Emeritus, who has strived over many years to advance the study of taxonomy of gobioid fishes while contributing continuously to the development of this Prize.
Prof Rizzolatti is known worldwide for discovering mirror neurons, which play a crucial role in enabling higher animals to understand the behavior of others, and for proposing the mirror mechanism.
His work elucidated the neural basis for understanding others at various levels, including behavior. Where all prior neuroscience research focused on the individual, the discovery of mirror neurons expanded the realm of neuroscience to include relationships among multiple individuals, or, in other words, society. Prof. Rizzolatti’s work has consequently not only contributed significantly to the advance of the new field of social neuroscience but has also had a major impact on cognitive neuroscience along with biology as a whole. For more information on the research of Prof. Rizzolatti that led to his award please refer to https://www.jsps.go.jp/english/e-biol/02_recipients/index.html