Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute or Kaiser Wilhelm Society (in German Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft, after Wilhelm II of Germany) was the name of a number of scientific institutes in Germany before World War II. After 1945 they were re-organised and renamed as Max Planck Institutes.
Founded on January 11, 1911 by Prussian Secretary of Cultural Affairs, August von Trott zu Solz, and funded by public subscription, the institute was intended to further Prussian prestige as a research establishment independent both of universities and the state. Its founding president was theologian Adolf von Harnack and vice president, Gustav Krupp.
They provided the scenes of much scientific work of lasting value, including, in 1938, the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin. However, several of the biomedical institutes achieved infamy through their participation in National Socialist (Nazi) racial science, particularly in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics.
[edit] Presidents
- Adolf von Harnack (1911 - 1930)
- Max Planck (1930 - 1937)
- Carl Bosch (1937-1940)
- Albert Vögler (1941-1945).
[edit] List of institutes
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, founded 1912 in Berlin
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research, headed by eugenicist Ernst Rudin and housed the infamous "Hallervorden Collection" of brains taken from victims of the Nazi euthanasia program
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Breeding Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry, founded 1911 in Berlin, Dahlem, it now houses the Institute for Chemistry of the Free University of Berlin
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Genealogy
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Cell Physiology
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research (Director 1925-1946: Ludwig Prandtl) first Max Planck Institute for Flow and now Max Planck Institute for Dynamics und Self-Organization
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Foreign and International Private Law
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Leather Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, in Berlin (Director 1917-1933: Albert Einstein)
- Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, founded 1911 in Berlin, Dahlem, now the Fritz Haber Institute after Fritz Haber (Director 1911-1933)
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