Balzan Foundation

The International Balzan Foundation was created in 1957 to recognize the most outstanding initiatives of peace and brotherhood among peoples and foster their growth in the scientific and cultural world. The main objective of the Foundation is to award the Balzan Prize. The Balzan Prizes are assigned by the General Prize Committee, a body working within the “Prize” Foundation in Milan. It is comprised of twenty members of the most prestigious learned societies from all over Europe. Each year, the General Prize Committee establishes the subject areas for the awards and chooses the winners from among the nominations entered by the world’s most important international cultural institutions at the Foundation’s request, and by leading figures whom the General Prize Committee recognizes as competent in the chosen fields for that year. Every year, the four Balzan Prizes are awarded to scholars and scientists who are distinguished in their fields on an international level. The aim of the Balzan prizes is to foster culture, the sciences and the most outstanding humanitarian initiatives of peace and brotherhood among peoples, regardless of nationality, race or creed. The four subject areas for the awards change every year. They are selected from among “literature, the moral sciences and the arts” and “the physical, mathematical and natural sciences and medicine”. Rotating the subjects ensures that new or emerging research gets recognition, while at the same time it supports important fields of study that may have been overlooked by other great international awards. Since 2001 the General Prize Committee have established a stipulation that Prizewinners must destine half of the Prize they receive for financing research projects that are preferably carried out by young scholars or scientists.