Max Planck Society Yearbook Highlights
Each year, the Max Planck Society submits a scientific research report in the form of a yearbook to render account of the scientific research performed at its Institutes to the public and its funding providers. The central questions addressed are: where do we stand, and where do we want to go? The Max Planck Institutes are asked to select a work or project from their scientific activities that is suitable for presentation in the yearbook, as far as these have reached a certain degree of completion. The yearbook contributions of all Max Planck Institutes are published on the website.
For this printed collection, 15 articles were selected and edited in a journalistic manner, which seemed particularly suited for publication from a science communication perspective and especially interesting also for non-experts. The highlights of the 2025 Yearbook showcase the wide range of scientific endeavours pursued by the Max Planck Society, covering fields such as materials science, biochemistry, and automated decision-making.
Among this year’s highlights, research from the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing casts Alzheimer’s disease in a new light. A team there has shown that a specific subgroup of microglia – the brain’s immunological sentinels – acts as an anti-inflammatory, slowing the disease's progression. Alzheimer’s thus emerges as a largely immunological disorder, opening up entirely new therapeutic avenues.
In the energy sector, nuclear fusion is quite literally taking on new forms. At the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, researchers used new software to optimise a stellarator configuration based on a historic ‘figure-8’ design. Strikingly, this allows for magnetic coils that are far simpler to manufacture, potentially making future fusion reactors considerably cheaper to build.
The Yearbook also looks deep into space. Mysterious ‘little red dots’ in James Webb Space Telescope images have put a team at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy on the trail of a new class of cosmic objects: so-called ‘black hole stars’. This discovery could finally explain how supermassive black holes formed so early in the infant universe.
Happy reading!
