Gilles Laurent Elected Fellow of the Royal Society
Gilles Laurent, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition of his pioneering studies of neural coding and information processing in the central nervous system.
The 2026 cohort comprises over 90 outstanding researchers from around the globe, including pioneers and leaders in various scientific disciplines, ranging from astronomy and cancer research to mathematics and biotechnology.
Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said: “I am delighted to welcome this newest group of exceptional scientists to the Fellowship of the Royal Society. Their contributions reflect the highest standards of scientific endeavor. Whether advancing our understanding of vaccines or exploring the transformative potential of mathematics and computation, their work exemplifies the enduring value of curiosity, creativity and rigorous inquiry.”
About Gilles Laurent
Laurent earned a doctorate in veterinary medicine and a PhD in Neuroethology in Toulouse, France, both in 1985, before moving to Cambridge, England, as a postdoctoral fellow with Malcolm Burrows and as a Locke Research Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1990, he joined the Caltech Biology faculty in Pasadena CA, before moving to Frankfurt, Germany, in 2009 as a Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. He is a member of EMBO and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine and the Karl Spencer Lashley Award in 2025.
Laurent is interested in the function and modes of operation of neuronal circuits, with a particular interest in network dynamics and in evolution. His interests range from olfactory circuit dynamics to sleep and to visual texture perception, as expressed by camouflaging cephalopods. Having worked on a wide range of species - insects, cephalopods, reptiles and mammals - he is particularly interested in the evolutionary convergence of brain computation.
About the Royal Society
The Royal Society is the world's oldest national scientific institution, dedicated to promoting excellence in science and using scientific advances for the benefit of society. With approximately 1,700 Fellows and Foreign Members, including Nobel Laureates, the Society operates on the basis of peer-reviewed excellence and elects distinguished scientists and technologists to life membership.
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