Major research

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The major research ( English Big Science ) refers to the outside of universities, some quasi-industrially-driven form of science that the scientific community can be found increasingly since the mid-20th century. These include, above all, large research facilities , such as those established in 1942 with the Manhattan Project ( Los Alamos National Laboratory ).

But the entire development of scientific practice can also be described as a change from little science conducted by individuals to organized big science , as the science historian Derek de Solla Price explained in his book Little Science, Big Science in 1963 . In this context, the information scientist Walther Umstätter spoke of an “assembly line production of knowledge” for the Internet age.

Major research in Germany

The history of large-scale research in Germany begins in 1911 with the establishment of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society (KWG), the forerunner of the Max Planck Society (MPG). While older institutions of the German Reich such as the German Health Office (1876) or the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (1887) still performed central state tasks in health control and standardization , research and industrial policy interests were at the fore when the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was founded in the foreground.

The establishment under the influence of Friedrich Althoff , Ministerialdirektor in the Prussian Ministry of Education, marks the beginning of a state science policy . In business and the state, the realization that science was an essential competitive factor, Germany threatened to fall behind competitors like Great Britain and France. By 1914 institutes for physical chemistry and electrochemistry, for chemistry, for experimental therapy and for work physiology as well as the institute for coal research in Mülheim an der Ruhr, which still exists today, were established .

1914-1945

During the First World War, military aspects predominated in research policy, so research into the production of poison gas was carried out at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry under Fritz Haber . The synthesis of ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen for the production of explosives and artificial fertilizers was also of military importance . Outside of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, the German Aviation Research Institute (DVL) in Berlin-Adlershof (1912) and the Aerodynamic Research Institute (AVA) in Göttingen (1918) were established.

In the Weimar Republic, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was able to continue its activity despite the loss of capital and namesake . In addition, the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (NDW), a predecessor of the German Research Foundation , was founded in 1920 .

In the Third Reich, military aspects and especially aviation came to the fore again. As a counterpart to the American Manhattan project , one can consider the rocket research in the Peenemünde Army Research Center under the direction of Wernher von Braun .

1945-1989

In 1948, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was in Max Planck Society renamed in the Federal Republic of Germany merged the Emergency Association in 1951 with the German Research Council for the German Research Foundation . After the Königstein State Agreement of 1949, research policy was a matter for the federal states, so the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft was founded in the same year by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs .

With the establishment of the Federal Ministry for Atomic Questions and the Atomic Energy Act in 1955, research into nuclear energy was defined as a federal political task for the FRG. By 1960 the first German nuclear reactor was built in Karlsruhe (KFK), the Jülich nuclear research facility (KFA), the Society for Nuclear Energy Utilization in Shipbuilding and Shipping (GKSS), the Hahn Meitner Institute (HMI) in Berlin, the German Electron Synchrotron ( DESY) in Hamburg and the Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Garching.

Nuclear research was also given a prominent role in the GDR , for example with the establishment of the Central Institute for Nuclear Physics (ZfK) in Rossendorf, an institute of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR , which could be compared with the large-scale research that was taking place in West Germany.

Since the early 1960s attempts have been made in West Germany to transfer the principle of large-scale research established in nuclear research to other areas of application. With the support of State Secretary Wolfgang Cartellieri , who is responsible for research issues, the German Aerospace Research Center (DLR), the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing (GMD), the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) and finally in 1979 the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).

In order to coordinate cross-center issues, the German nuclear physics research centers founded a working committee for administrative and operational issues of the German reactor stations as early as 1958 , which was followed at the beginning of 1970 by the establishment of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Großforschungseinrichtungen (AGF) to deal with questions about strategic orientation, training, salary and To be able to better coordinate patent handling and the exchange of experience in operational and security issues. In the years that followed, the AGF was joined by other research centers: in 1975 the German Cancer Research Center , in 1976 the Society for Biotechnological Research (today's Helmholtz Center for Infection Research ), and in 1983 the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research .

Since 1989

After the reunification of Germany, the problem of integrating the Academy of Sciences of the GDR into the West German research institutions was in the foreground. An example of a merger with the Leibniz Association (WGL) is the Warnemünde Institute for Oceanography, which, as a member of the German Academy of Sciences, was the central marine research institute in the GDR and was re-established as the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research in 1992 on the recommendation of the Science Council . The Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and the GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), the UFZ Environmental Research Center Leipzig-Halle, today's Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) were also newly founded as research centers of the AGF . In 2001 the Society for Mathematics and Data Processing was merged with the Fraunhofer Society .

At the same time, the AGF had already been converted into the HGF, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centers , in 1995 . But it was not until 2001 that the still loose membership association was converted into a registered association of legally independent members and the funding mechanisms were subjected to extensive structural reform. The core of this structural reform was the introduction of program-oriented funding (in contrast to the previous center-oriented funding), in which the members of the community apply for funding for their research programs in a program appraisal that takes place every five years in competition or in cooperation. The Central Institute for Nuclear Physics (ZfK) in Rossendorf, which was re-established as the Rossendorf Research Center in the Leibniz Association after reunification on the recommendation of the Science Council , became a member of the HGF in 2011 under the name Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf .

International participations

Since the 1950s, large-scale German research has also included participation in international research institutions . Most of these institutes were previously based abroad. Examples are the particle physics center CERN in Geneva , about 20 percent of which is financed by Germany, the synchrotron radiation source ESRF and the neutron source ILL (both in Grenoble ), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile and the ESS in Lund (which is being planned) Sweden). In contrast, the molecular biology laboratory EMBL Heidelberg and the supersonic wind tunnel ETW Cologne have been based in the Federal Republic of Germany for many years. The Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste synchrotron radiation source is also subsidized by the Federal Republic of Germany and the Republic of Austria.

The legal status of these international institutes varies and ranges from the status of an international organization to that of a private company of one of the member states (e.g. a German GmbH ), whose shareholders can either be the member states directly or research institutions in these states.

With the X-ray laser European XFEL in Hamburg and the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research FAIR in Darmstadt, the first internationally financed large-scale research infrastructures are currently being built on German soil.

The International Space Station ISS can also be viewed as a large-scale research facility.

Use outside of public research; criticism

Not all of these large research facilities are exclusively for research. So z. B. some particle accelerators can be used directly for proton therapy of cancer patients. Companies can also rent beamtime in accelerators for their proprietary research and development or commission experiments. The effects of international cooperation and exchange in large research institutions should also not be underestimated. Criticism of large research institutions is often based on the high costs, but also on the ecological consequences. The CERN particle accelerator, for example, consumes six to eight percent of all electricity in the canton of Geneva with its 450,000 inhabitants.

Web links

See also

Quotes

"For promoting invention, big science in this sense is the technological equivalent of war, and it doesn't kill anyone."

- Steven Weinberg : Article The Crisis of Big Science , 2012

literature

References

  1. ↑ The context of large-scale research also includes complex systems to ensure sustainable documentation of research results, for example to avoid redundancies in project work. In response to the Sputnik shock , Alvin M. Weinberg , for example, presented specific recommendations in the so-called Weinberg Report that should ensure a better exchange of knowledge in large-scale research, see Alvin M. Weinberg: Science, Government, and Information . 1963. (German translation) ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ib.hu-berlin.de
  2. ↑ Derek de Solla Price : Little Science, Big Science , Suhrkamp, ​​1974 Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ib.hu-berlin.de
  3. ↑ Walther Umstätter: The use of the Internet for the assembly line production of knowledge. In: Organizational Informatics and Digital Library in Science. Gesellschaft für Wissenschaftsforschung, 2001, ISBN 3-934682-34-0 , pp. 179-199. (pdf; 341 kB)
  4. ↑ C. Habfast: Large-scale research with small particles. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-540-51463-5 .
  5. ^ Sander Münster: Nuclear research in the GDR as large-scale research? The Central Institute for Nuclear Research in Rossendorf around 1960 , VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2011, ISBN 978-3639321296 .
  6. ↑ Large-scale research and autonomy - The history of the Helmholtz Association. (PDF; 925 kB) In: Neuherberger Lectures. Issue 1, November 2006.
  7. ↑ Brit Schmidt: 60 years of CERN: in search of the god particle , web.de magazine, September 29, 2014.
  8. ↑ In German, for example: "With regard to promoting innovation, 'Big Science' is comparable to war, with the difference that nobody is killed in the process." Steven Weinberg in: The Crisis of Big Science , accessed May 6, 2014.