Two EU-funded researchers receive 2025 Wolf Prize
Two European Research Council (ERC)-backed researchers, Moty Heiblum and Jonathan Jones, are among the winners of the 2025 Wolf Prize, a prestigious award honouring scientists and artists for outstanding achievements in advancing science and the arts for the benefit of humankind. The Wolf Prize is awarded annually and acknowledges extraordinary individuals who transcend religious, gender, racial, geographical and political barriers in their work.
Advancements in physics
Israeli physicist and electrical engineer Mordehai (Moty) Heiblum is one of three laureates to receive the award for his work in neutral and fractionally charged quasi-particles and fractional quantum Hall states. For his research, he received support from three ERC-funded projects: NEUTRAL, FQHE and ANYONIC. Together with scientists Jainendra Jain and James Eisenstein, Heiblum was awarded the Wolf Prize in Physics with the award citation “For advancing our understanding of the surprising properties of two-dimensional electron systems in strong magnetic fields.” According to the Wolf Foundation, the three laureates “profoundly transformed our understanding of the fractional quantum Hall effect, (a Nobel prize-winning phenomenon) in which a thin layer of electrons in a magnetic field behaves as if the electrical current is carried by particles charged with a fraction of the electron charge.” Heiblum’s team explored these particles in the lab, developing ultra-high-purity materials and electron interferometry techniques that provided “concrete evidence for the fractional charge” and verified “fundamental predictions, including the anomalous statistics (intermediate between that of fermions and bosons).”
Achievements in agriculture
Jonathan Jones, the second EU-backed scientist recognised for his scientific accomplishments, was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture with the award citation “For groundbreaking discoveries of the immune system and disease resistance in plants.” The plant molecular geneticist shares this award with scientists Jeffery Dangl and Brian Staskawicz. According to the Wolf Foundation, much of what we know about plant immune systems today is owed to the “groundbreaking discoveries” made by these three scientists. Jones “was the first to clone plant resistance genes that encode eukaryotic cell surface immune receptors.” He also “uncovered mechanisms by which immune receptors are activated through the indirect recognition of pathogen-effector proteins by extracellular and intracellular immune receptors, respectively.” The scientist was supported in his work by the ERC-funded projects ImmunityByPairDesign and ALBUGON. “It’s wonderful to see this recognition of the importance of understanding the basic mechanisms that underpin plant disease resistance; without that knowledge, we will not be able to establish durable disease resistance in our crops,” Jones comments on receiving the Wolf Prize in a TSL news item. His contributions and that of his fellow laureates have paved the way for targeted strategies to improve plant resistance and control a wide range of diseases. The ImmunityByPairDesign (Design and redesign of a plant immune receptor complex), ALBUGON (Genomics and effectoromics to understand defence suppression and disease resistance in Arabidopsis-Albugo candida interactions), NEUTRAL (Neutral Quasi-Particles in Mesoscopic Physics) and FQHE (Statistics of Fractionally Charged Quasi-Particles) projects have ended. ANYONIC (Statistics of Exotic Fractional Hall States) ends in April 2026. For more information, please see: ImmunityByPairDesign project ALBUGON project NEUTRAL project FQHE project ANYONIC project
Keywords
ImmunityByPairDesign, ALBUGON, NEUTRAL, FQHE, ANYONIC, Wolf Prize, agriculture, plant, immune, immunity, disease resistance, physics, electron, magnetic field, fractional quantum Hall, Jonathan Jones, Moty Heiblum
