Solvay Chairs
The International Solvay chairs enable the Solvay Institutes to invite in Brussels an eminent scientist for a period of one to two months in order to give lectures on her or his work to researchers in the corresponding field. The chair program starts with an inaugural lecture, the target of which is a broad audience.
The International Solvay Chair in Physics was created in 2006 with the enthusiastic and efficient support of Jacques Solvay who was then the President of the Solvay Institutes. After his death, the Board of Directors of the International Solvay Institutes decided to rename the chair after him.
Thanks to the support of the Solvay company, the program was extended to Chemistry in 2008. In 2024, after the split of the original Solvay company into two separate entities, the chemistry chair program was taken over by the Syensqo company, which now generously provides its funding. The chemistry chair was renamed "Syensqo chair in chemistry by the International Solvay Institutes", or "Syensqo chair in chemistry" for short
Jacques Solvay International Chairs in Physics
- 2025 Solvay Professor: Vyacheslav
Rychkov
(IHES, Bures-sur-Yvette, France)
Inaugural lecture on 25 March 2025 (Solvay Room)
Second lecture on 15 April (Solvay Room)
Third lecture on 16 April (Solvay Room)
Fourth lecture on 17 April (Solvay Room)
Lecture on 22 April: Time TBC (UGent)
Lecture in early May: Time TBC (KULeuven)
- 2026 Solvay Professor: Ignacio Cirac
(Max Planck Insititute of Quantum Optics, Germany)
- 2027 Solvay Professor: Maxim Pospelov
(University of Minnesota, USA)
Chairs in Biolgogy
- 2025 Solvay Professor: Benjamin Simons
(Cambridge University, UK)
Syensqo Chairs
in Chemistry by
the International Solvay Institutes
- 2025 Solvay Professor: Laura Gagliardi
(University of Chicago)
Inaugural lecture on 28 January 2025
Second lecture on 18 February 2025
Third lecture on 2 September 2025
Fourth lecture on 28 October 2025
- 2026 Solvay Professor: Roberta Sessoli
(Florence University, Italy)