Eörs Szathmáry studied biology at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. After finishing his PhD, he served as research fellow at Eötvös University (Budapest), later becoming professor and head of the Department of Plant Taxonomy and Ecology. Szathmáry was guest of the Wissenschafstkolleg zu Berlin, the University of Zürich and the College de France in Paris. He was serving as permanent fellow of the Collegium Budapest (Institute for Advanced Study, 1995-2011). Since 2011 he is the director of the Parmenides Center for the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the Parmenides Foundation in Munich, Germany. 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. Between 2019 and 2021 he served as Director General of the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary.

Prizes: New Europe Prize for Higher Education and Research (1996) Academy Prize (1999), Széchenyi Prize (2017)

Member of the Presidium of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, Academia Europaea and EMBO

For information on the ERC Synergy Grant “MiniLife” (01/02/24 - 31/01/2030) please click here.

Selected Publications

Maynard Smith, J. & Szathmáry, E. (1995) The Major Transitions in Evolution. Freeman & Co., Oxford.

Szathmáry, E. & Maynard Smith, J. (1995) The major evolutionary transitions. Nature 374, 227-232.

Maynard Smith, J. & Szathmáry, E. (1999) The Origins of Life. Oxford Univ. Press.

Szabó, P., Scheuring, I., Czárán, T. & Szathmáry, E. (2002) In silico simulations reveal that replicators with limited dispersal evolve towards higher efficiency and fidelity. Nature 420, 360-363.

Bickerton, D. & Szathmáry E. (eds) (2009) Biological Foundations and Origin of Syntax. MIT Press, Cambridge, Ma.

Szathmáry, E. (2015) Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. 112, 10104–10111.

Matsumura S, Kun Á, Ryckelynck M, Coldren F, Szilágyi A, Jossinet F, Rick C, Nghe P, Szathmáry E, Griffiths AD. (2016) Transient compartmentalization of RNA replicators prevents extinction due to parasites. Science 354, 1293-1296.

de Vladar H.P., Santos M, Szathmáry E. (2017) Grand Views of Evolution. Trends Ecol. Evol. 32, 324-334.

Öllinger M, Volz K, Szathmáry E. (Eds). (2018) Insight and Intuition -- Two Sides of the Same Coin? Frontiers Media, Lausanne.

Zachar, I., Szilágyi, A., Számadó, S. & Szathmáry, E. (2018) Farming by the host cell as the origin of mitochondrial endosymbiosis by natural selection. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 115, E1504-E1510.

Carmel Yohay, Shavit Ayelet, Lamm Ehud and Szathmáry Eörs (2023) Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B3782021039720210397 http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0397