The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004
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Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

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right The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (abbreviated MPG, meaning Max Planck society for the advancement of science) is a network of elite scientific research institutes in Germany.

It comprises of 80 institutes, all called "Max Planck-Institut (MPI) für (for) ..." which are at distributed all over Germany and cover many fields of scientific research. The institutes have a total staff of 12,000 permanent employees plus around 9,000 scientists working there only temporally.

The MPG is organised as an eingetragener Verein (basically a private non-profit organisation), but is chiefly run from public money from the federal research budget. Its budget for 2002 was about 1,250 million euro, with 95% supplied by state and especially federal governments of Germany and 5% by donations and earnings.

The institutes often cooperate closely with the universities nearby, but are independent of them (and, as stated above, funded federally, while universities are run by the states). This allows their staff to concentrate on research, without teaching obligations. The Max-Planck-Instituts are also better equipped and funded than university research departments, and hence world-leading scientific institutions.

The MPG is named after Max Planck, the famous German physicist who initiated quantum mechanics. It is the successor of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (Emperor William Society) which took the role the MPG has now in pre-war Germany.

The MPG's logo features Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom

Other notable networks of publicly funded research institutes in Germany are the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the Helmholtz-Gesellschaft.

The MPG's website is http://www.mpg.de

Apart from the institutes, there are the International Max Planck Research Schools, Independent Junior Research Groups and other facilities.

Max Planck Institutes

Here is a list of the institutes, the names translated into English: