Eörs Szathmáry

Eörs Szathmáry (Hungary 1959) obtained his M.Sc. in biology in 1984 and his Ph.D. at Eötvös University, Budapest. He served as research fellow in the Department of Plant Taxonomy at Eötvös, between 1987 and 1995. His stays abroad include (in temporal order): The University of Sussex (Brighton, UK), MCR National Institute for Medical Research (London, UK), Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study), University of Zürich, Bellaggio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, College de France (Paris), Parmenides Foundation (Pullach/Munich). Between 1995 and 2002 he served as Head of the Department of Plant Taxonomy and Ecology at Eötvös University where he has been professor and head of the MTA-ELTE Theoretical Biology and Evolutionary Ecology Research Group and the Doctoral Programme in Theoretical Biology. He is member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of Academia Europaea. He was permanent fellow of Collegium Budapest and is director of the Centre for the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the Parmenides Foundation. His research topics include: the major evolutionary transitions, origins of life and the genetic code, emergence of the human language faculty, levels and mechanisms of biological cooperation, Darwinian neurodynamics and astrobiology. He earned the Prize of the Academy and the New Europe Prize of Higher Education and Research.

Topic: Cooperation: Theory and Application