The seven million year old Sahelanthropus tchadensis was discovered in 2001 in Chad and announced in 2002 as a habitual bipedal hominin species based on an adult distorted cranium. Thus, any ...

Suropriya Saha from the Max Planck Institute of Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, about the theoretical physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer, who won the Physics Nobel Prize in 1963 Maria ...

Astronomers have directly imaged the “swirl” where a protoplanet interacts with the gas in the surrounding protoplanetary disk. Taking an image of structures this small requires a powerful observatory ...

Orangutan infants spend their first eight years with their mothers, and throughout this time, they can draw on her knowledge. After that, however, orangutans are entirely on their own. To fare well as ...

AI models are becoming increasingly adept at identifying and exploiting security vulnerabilities in IT systems. In July 2026, models from OpenAI, including GPT‑5.6 Sol, even began acting autonomously ...

The Executive Committee advises the President and prepares important decisions for the Society. The Executive Committee draws up the overall budget and prepares the annual accounts. Members of ...

Medical therapies are constantly evolving. As part of our focus on the “Future of Medicine” Science Year, we are presenting new approaches in three areas. We describe how a team in Göttingen is ...

The current call for applications for the Max Planck Postdoc Program runs from 1 September to 13 October 2026 (12 pm CEST). Open positions can be found on the application platform. Please check the ...

At the Max Planck Society, there are various ways to become the Leader of a Research Group - via centralized selection procedures as well as via decentralized ones at the MPIs. Group Leaders can draw ...

With approximately 26,700 employees at 85 Max Planck Institutes and more than 11,000 early-career and visiting researchers each year, the Max Planck Society is an international organization for ...

After the discoveries he made with his telescope, Galileo Galilei embarked on an increasingly urgent quest for proof of the Copernican worldview, which placed the Sun rather than the Earth at the ...