The annual Paul B. Baltes Lecture was initiated to commemorate Paul Baltes` achievements for psychological research in the Berlin-Potsdam region and his contributions to psychology. Since 2008, leading scientists have been invited to give talks on their current research.

The Paul B. Baltes Lecture series are hosted by the Psychological Institutes of the Free University Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Technische Universität Berlin and the Universität Potsdam in collaboration with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, and is supported by the Margret M. and Paul B. Baltes Foundation.

• 2008:

The lecture was held by Prof. Michael I. Posner, University of Oregon. His lecture was entitled: "Executive attention: Its origins, development, and functions".

• 2009:

The lecture was held by Prof. Dr. Lynn Hasher, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto and Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. The topic of her lecture was: "Age-Related Consequences of Attention Regulation and Dysregulation".

• 2010:

The lecture was dedicated to the Humboldt University Berlin`s conferral of an honorary doctorate upon John R. Nesselroade. The topic of the lecture is: "The Person-Oriented Perspective in Psychology". It was supported by Peter Molenaar (The Pennsylvania State University, USA), Bernd Schmitz (Technische Universität Darmstadt), Sy-Miin Chow (University of North Carolina, USA), and Florian Schmiedek (Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung, Frankfurt am Main). John R. Nesselroade was given the opportunity to insert his comments in the keynote discussion.

• 2011:

The lecture was held by Andrew N. Meltzoff Co-Director, University of Washington Institute for Learing & Brain Sciences. The title of his talk was "The Develolpment of Social Cognition: Imitation, Cultural Stereotypes and Identity Formation in Children"

• 2012:

The lecture was held by Dr. Jutta Heckhausen,Professor of Psychology University of California. The title of her talk was "A Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development"

• 2013:

The lecture was held by Prof. Dr. Wendy A. Rogers, Human Factors and Aging Laboratory,
Georgia Institute of Technology. The title of her talk was "Human-Robot Interaction:
Understanding the Potential of Robots for Older Adults"

• 2014:

The lecture was held by Prof. Brent W. Roberts from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .

• 2015:

The lecture was held by Professor Ray J. Dolan, Director, Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL, London. The title of his talk was "Circuits for Social Cognition".

• 2016:

The lecture was held by Diane Poulin-Dubois, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. The title of her talk was "The developmental origins of selective trust".