Famous research institutes
In the early medieval period, several astronomical observatories were built in the Islamic world. The first of these was the 9th-century Baghdad observatory built during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, though the most famous were the 13th-century Maragheh observatory, and the 15th-century Ulugh Beg Observatory. [1]
The Kerala School of Astronomy and Mathematics was a school of mathematics and astronomy founded by Madhava of Sangamagrama in Kerala, India. The school flourished between the 14th and 16th centuries and the original discoveries of the school seems to have ended with Narayana Bhattathiri (1559–1632). In attempting to solve astronomical problems, the Kerala school independently discovered a number of important mathematical concepts.
The earliest research institute in Europe was Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg complex on the island of Hven, a 16th-century astronomical laboratory set up to make highly accurate measurements of the stars. In the United States there are numerous notable research institutes including Bell Labs, Xerox Parc, The Scripps Research Institute, [2] Beckman Institute, RTI International, and SRI International. Hughes Aircraft used a research institute structure for its organizational model. [3]
Thomas Edison, dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park", [4] was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of invention in the late 1800s, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. [5]
Research institutes in Europe
From the throes of the Scientific Revolution came the 17th century scientific academy. In London, the Royal Society was founded in 1660, and in France Louis XIV founded the Académie royale des sciences in 1666 which came after private academic assemblies had been created earlier in the seventeenth century to foster research.
In the early 18th century, Peter the Great established an educational-research institute to be built in his newly created imperial capital, St Petersburg. His plan combined provisions for linguistic, philosophical and scientific instruction with a separate academy in which graduates could pursue further scientific research. It was the first institution of its kind in Europe to conduct scientific research within the structure of a university. The St Petersburg Academy was established by decree on 28 January 1724. [6]
At the European level, there are now several government-funded institutions such as the European Space Agency (ESA), the nuclear research centre CERN, the European Southern Observatory ESO (Grenoble), the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) (Grenoble), the EUMETSAT facility, the Italian -European Sistema Trieste with, among others, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics and the research complex Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, the biology project EMBL, and the fusion projects ITER and Wendelstein 7-X, which in addition to technical developments have a strong research focus.
The University of Trieste is a public research university in Trieste in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region in northeast Italy. The university consists of 10 departments, has a wide and almost complete range of university courses and has about 15,000 students and 1,000 professors. It was founded in 1924.
The Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences, previously Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, is an advanced public research institute in Tehran, Iran. IPM is directed by Mohammad-Javad Larijani, its original founder. The institute was the first Iranian organization to connect to the Internet and provide internet service to the nation. It is the domain name registry of .ir domain names.
Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (IRAM) is an international research institute and Europe's leading center for radio astronomy at millimeter wavelengths. Its mission is to explore the universe, study its origins and its evolution with two of the most advanced radio facilities in the world:
The International School for Advanced Studies is an international, state-supported, post-graduate-education and research institute in Trieste, Italy.
Astronomical Observatory of Trieste is an astronomical center of studies located in the city of Trieste in northern Italy.
The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) is an international research institute for physical and mathematical sciences that operates under a tripartite agreement between the Italian Government, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It is located near the Miramare Park, about 10 kilometres from the city of Trieste, Italy. The centre was founded in 1964 by Pakistani Nobel Laureate Abdus Salam.
The Université Grenoble Alpes is a public research university in Grenoble, France. Founded in 1339, it is the third largest university in France with about 60,000 students and over 3,000 researchers.
Tantrasamgraha, or Tantrasangraha, is an important astronomical treatise written by Nilakantha Somayaji, an astronomer/mathematician belonging to the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics. The treatise was completed in 1501 CE. It consists of 432 verses in Sanskrit divided into eight chapters. Tantrasamgraha had spawned a few commentaries: Tantrasamgraha-vyakhya of anonymous authorship and Yuktibhāṣā authored by Jyeshtadeva in about 1550 CE. Tantrasangraha, together with its commentaries, bring forth the depths of the mathematical accomplishments the Kerala school of astronomy and mathematics, in particular the achievements of the remarkable mathematician of the school Sangamagrama Madhava. In his Tantrasangraha, Nilakantha revised Aryabhata's model for the planets Mercury and Venus. According to George G Joseph his equation of the centre for these planets remained the most accurate until the time of Johannes Kepler in the 17th century.
The National Institute for Astrophysics is an Italian research institute in astronomy and astrophysics, founded in 1999. INAF funds and operates twenty separate research facilities, which in turn employ scientists, engineers and technical staff. The research they perform covers most areas of astronomy, ranging from planetary science to cosmology.
Katepalli Raju Sreenivasan is an aerospace scientist, fluid dynamicist, and applied physicist whose research includes physics and applied mathematics. He studies turbulence, nonlinear and statistical physics, astrophysical fluid mechanics, and cryogenic helium. He was the dean of engineering and executive vice provost for science and technology of New York University. Sreenivasan is also the Eugene Kleiner Professor for Innovation in Mechanical Engineering at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and a professor of physics and mathematics professor at the New York University Graduate School of Arts and Science and Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
The institute of physics is a part of the Faculty of natural sciences of the Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice in Slovakia. Its director is currently Michal Jaščur. Primary activities of the institute are:
Fayyazuddin, also spelled as Fayyaz Uddin, is a Pakistani theoretical physicist, emeritus professor, specialising in theoretical physics and mathematical physics at Quaid-e-Azam University campus National Centre for Physics, Islamabad. He is a senior scientist at the National Center for Physics. Fayyaz is doing research in the fields of quantum mechanics, particle physics, and meson physics. He has published numerous physics papers accompanied by Riazuddin and has co-authored Quantum Mechanics by Fayyazuddin and Riazuddin published in 1990.
Luciano Fonda was an Italian theoretical physicist, author of a hundred of scientific publications, including a book on quantum symmetries. His research activity covered several areas, from nuclear and subnuclear physics to condensed state physics.
The L. N. Gumilev Eurasian National University (ENU), is a Kazakh national research university, and the largest higher education institution in Astana.
ICRA, the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics is an international research institute for relativistic astrophysics and related areas. Its members are seven Universities and four organizations. The center is located in Rome, Italy.
The University of Niš Faculty of Science and Mathematics, also known as the Niš Faculty of Science and Mathematics, is one of the educational institutions of the University of Niš, Serbia.
The Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics is a research and teaching institute dedicated to astronomy, astrophysics and solar physics located at Blindern in Oslo, Norway. It is a department of The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. It was founded in its current form by Svein Rosseland with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1934, and was the first of its kind in the world when it opened. Prior to that, it existed as the University Observatory which was created in 1833. It thus is one of the university's oldest institutions. As of 2019, it houses research groups in cosmology, extragalactic astronomy, and The Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics, a Norwegian Centre of Excellence.
Maria Teresa Vaz Torrão Lago is a Portuguese astronomer who founded the Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto and created the first astronomy degree program in Portugal. Lago is currently the General Secretary of the International Astronomical Union. Her research focuses on the evolution of young stars and she is active in the promotion of astronomy and scientific culture to the public.
