Forty years ago, when the Prize was first founded, hardly anyone spoke of sustainability, the environment, local culture and attention to diversity and minorities. Yet in the founders’ culture and in their choice of winners, all these topics were already there, with a firm belief that they should not be separated from, or even opposed by modernity, industry and civil and economic progress. Today, just like yesterday, therefore, the Masi Prize rewards those who point the way to harmonious progress: men and women who fight to find a way out of contradictions that mark our present, avoiding degrowth or retreat into the past. The 2020 edition takes a particular look at the pandemic, but also goes beyond it, with that faith that has always been the hallmark of our Prize and its interpreters.