| Max Planck Society | |
|---|---|
Eugen Fischer (Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology) with Max Planck, circa 1940 |
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| Formation | 1948 / 1911 (foundation of Kaiser Wilhelm Society) |
| Budget | €1.4 billion (2006) |
| Staff | 13000 |
| Website | www.mpg.de |
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (German: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes publicly funded by the federal and the 16 state governments of Germany.
The nearly 80 research institutes of the Max Planck Society conduct basic research in the interest of the general public in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the arts and humanities. They have a total staff of approx. 13,000 permanent employees, including 4,700 scientists, plus around 11,000 non-tenured scientists and guests. Their budget for 2006 was about €1.4 billion, with 84% from state and federal funds.[1] The Max Planck Institutes focus on excellence in research, with 32 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists, and are generally regarded as the foremost basic research organization in Germany and Europe.
Other notable networks of publicly funded research institutes in Germany are the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, performing applied research with a focus on industrial collaborations, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, a network of the national laboratories in Germany, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Scientific Community, a loose network of institutes performing basic to applied research.
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The organisation was established in 1911 as the Kaiser Wilhelm Society, or Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (KWG), a non-governmental research organisation named for the then German emperor. The KWG was one of the world's leading research organisations; its board of directors included scientists like Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber and Werner Heisenberg. In 1946, Otto Hahn assumed the position of President of KWG, and in 1948, the society was renamed the Max Planck Society (MPG) after its former President (1930–37) Max Planck, who was recently deceased.
The Max Planck Society has a world-leading reputation as a science & technology research organization. In 2006, the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings[2] of non-university research institutions (based on international peer review by academics) placed the Max Planck Society as No.1 in the world for science research, and No.3 in technology research (behind AT&T and the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States).
The domain mpg.de attracted at least 1.7 million visitors annually by 2008 according to a Compete.com study.[3]
The Max Planck Society is formally an eingetragener Verein, a registered association with the institute directors as scientific members having equal voting rights.[4] The society has its registered seat in Berlin, while the administrative headquarters are located in Munich. In 2002 the cell biologist Peter Gruss assumed the office of President of the MPG.
Funding is provided predominantly from federal and state sources, but also from research and license fees and donations. One of the larger donations from the Duke of Bavaria in 1967 was the castle Schloss Ringberg near Kreuth in Bavaria. The castle passed to the Max Planck Society after the death of the duke in 1973 and is now used for conferences.
The Max Planck Society consists of nearly 80 research institutes. In addition, the society funds a number of Max Planck Research Groups (MPRG) and International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS). The purpose of establishing independent research groups at various universities is to strengthen the required networking between universities and institutes of the Max Planck Society.
The research units are located all over Germany and in other European countries. The society is currently planning its first non-European centre, with an institute on the Jupiter campus of Florida Atlantic University to focus on bioimaging.[5]
The Max Planck Institutes operate independently from, though in close cooperation with, the universities, and focus on innovative research which does not fit into the university structure due to their interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary nature or which require resources that cannot be met by the state universities.
Internally, Max Planck Institutes are organized into research departments headed by directors such that each MPI has several directors, a position roughly comparable to anything from full professor to department head at a university.
Currently, the following institutes and research groups exist:
Together with the Association of Universities and other Education Institutions in Germany, the Max Planck Society established numerous International Max Planck Research Schools (IMPRS) to promote junior scientists:
Among others:
A controversial point regarding the Max Planck Society is the case of discrimination against foreign workers.[6] Until the year 2004, it was explicitly stated in internal documents of the Max Planck Society that Foreign researchers should not be granted the same type of contract as german workers. German researchers were to have contracts with social benefits (i.e. unemployment benefits, health inssurance, retirement pensions, etc.), while foreigners were to have a grant (internally called stipendium) which does not include social benefits.[7] While the net monthly salary of both types of contracts is comparable, the tax benefits amount to a significant portion of the salary.
The case of discrimination was brought to the European Parliament by Giorgio Calo among others,[8] and then to the Europan civil Court by Andrea Raccanelli[9] in the year 2004. Further allegations were made, such as the possibly illegal termination of tax benefits to about 20 foreigners once the MPI for Colloids and Interfaces discovered that giving foreigners tax benefits was against Max Planck Society's regulations.[10] The European Court failed in favour of Raccanelli, stating that giving German research workers a different type of contract than other citizens from the European Union is considered a violation of the Article 39 EC.[11] As a result, the European Court addressed the Max Planck Society to change such regulations, which they did.[12]
In the first months after the resolution opposing data were presented: Raccanelli addressed the European Union civil court again stating that, although formally regulations had changed, Max Planck Institutes continued to de facto proceed in the same way, for which he provided data.[13] He requested that data were provided by the MPG to verify that their change in policy was being implemented. The civil court replied that the Max Planck Society had provided data stating that, while there still were inequalities between foreign and local workers, these had been diminished.[14] Whether this change of policy has been consolidated and expanded over time has not been siystematically studied.
High charges of the Max Planck Society have justified the previous internal regulations. For instance, the Head of Dpt. of Personnel and Legal affairs (Ruediger Willems) alleged to historical reasons as the basis of this discrimination,[15] he furthermore stated that foreign students having a Stipendium were asked to work much less.[15] Although a Stipendium indeed has weaker contractual bounds, the students were treated as if having a regular contract. Also, the director of the Max Planck Society (Peter Gruss) as well as the director of the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces (Reinhard Lipowsky) alleged that regulations of the Bund-Länder-Kommission forced them to discriminate foreign workers.[10][16]