The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every field, particularly in fundamental research.

History

In 1713,

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (or Leibnitz; – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat who is credited, alongside Sir Isaac Newton, with the creation of calculus in addition to ...

suggested to establish an Academy, inspired by the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

and the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (, ) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific method, scientific research. It was at the forefron ...

. The "Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien" was finally established by Imperial Patent on 14 May 1847. The academy soon began extensive research. In the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

the academy started with researching and publishing important historical sources of Austria. Research in

natural science Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

also covered a wide variety of topics. The 1921 federal law guaranteed the legal basis of the academy in the newly founded

First Austrian Republic The First Austrian Republic (), officially the Republic of Austria, was created after the signing of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 10 September 1919—the settlement after the end of World War I which ended the Habsburg rump state of ...

. From the mid-1960s onwards it became the country's leading institution in the field of non-university basic research. The academy is also a

learned society A learned society ( ; also scholarly, intellectual, or academic society) is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline, profession, or a group of related disciplines such as the arts and sciences. Membership may be open to al ...

, and its past members have included

Theodor Billroth Christian Albert Theodor Billroth (26 April 18296 February 1894) was a German surgeon and amateur musician. As a surgeon, he is generally regarded as the founding father of modern abdominal surgery. As a musician, he was a close friend and conf ...

Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann ( ; ; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian mathematician and Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics and the statistical ex ...

Christian Doppler Christian Andreas Doppler (; ; 29 November 1803 – 17 March 1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist. He formulated the principle – now known as the Doppler effect – that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative spe ...

, Anton Eiselsberg, Otto Hittmair,

Paul Kretschmer Paul Kretschmer (2 May 1866 – 9 March 1956) was a German linguist who studied the earliest history and interrelations of the Indo-European languages and showed how they were influenced by non-Indo-European languages, such as Etruscan. Biogr ...

, Hans Horst Meyer, Albert Anton von Muchar,

Julius von Schlosser Julius Alwin Franz Georg Andreas Ritter von Schlosser (23 September 1866, Vienna – 1 December 1938, Vienna) was an Austrian art historian and an important member of the Vienna School of Art History. According to Ernst Gombrich, he was "One of th ...

Roland Scholl Roland Heinrich Scholl (30 September 1865 – 22 August 1945) was a Swiss chemist who taught at various European universities. Among his most notable achievements are the synthesis of coronene, the co-development of the Bally-Scholl synthesis, ...

Eduard Suess Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 – 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and ...

and the Nobel Prize winners

Julius Wagner-Jauregg Julius Wagner-Jauregg (; 7 March 1857 – 27 September 1940) was an Austrian physician, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1927, and is the first psychiatrist to have done so. His Nobel award was "for his discovery of the therape ...

Victor Francis Hess Victor Franz Hess (; 24 June 1883 – 17 December 1964) was an Austrian-American particle physicist who shared the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics with Carl David Anderson "for his discovery of cosmic radiation". Biography He was born to Vinzenz ...

Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger ( ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was an Austrian-Irish theoretical physicist who developed fundamental results in quantum field theory, quantum theory. In particul ...

and

Konrad Lorenz Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Austrian ; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoology, zoologist, ethology, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von ...

Anton Zeilinger Anton Zeilinger (; born 20 May 1945) is an Austrian quantum physicist and Nobel laureate in physics of 2022. Zeilinger is professor of physics emeritus at the University of Vienna and senior scientist at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Qu ...

, predecessor of the academy's incumbent president, is Nobel Prize laureate in physics 2022.

Research facilities

The academy operates 25 research institutes. In 2012, a reorganization prompted the outsourcing of various institutes to universities as well as mergers. The academy's institutes are split into two major divisions, one for mathematics and natural sciences (''mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Klasse'') and one for humanities and social sciences (''philosophisch-historische Klasse''). In the field of

, there are the

Institute for the Study of Ancient Culture The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa (ISAC), formerly known as the Oriental Institute, is the University of Chicago's interdisciplinary research center for ancient Near Eastern studies and archaeology museum. ...

, which is well known for the analysis of excavation results in

Carnuntum Carnuntum ( according to Ptolemy) was a Roman legionary fortress () and headquarters of the Roman navy, Pannonian fleet from 50 AD. After the 1st century, it was capital of the Pannonia Superior province. It also became a large city of app ...

and

Ephesos Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...

, the Institute for Interdisciplinary Mountain Research, focusing on montology, the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History, and the

Vienna Institute of Demography The Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) (until 2002: Institut für Demographie/IfD) is a research institute of the division for humanities and social sciences within the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and part of the three "''pillar instit ...

, among others. The academy conducts socio-cultural research in Tibetan-speaking Himalayas, Tibet, and central Asia. Facilities that focus on

natural sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

include the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (which is operated in cooperation with

Boehringer Ingelheim C.H. Boehringer Sohn AG & Co. is the parent company of the Boehringer Ingelheim group, which was founded in 1885 by Albert Boehringer (1861–1939) in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany. As of 2018, Boehringer Ingelheim is one of the world's List of la ...

), the Gregor Mendel Institute, the Aithyra Institute for biomedical Artificial Intelligence, the Johann Radon Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics (RICAM), Linz, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine, the Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science, the

Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information The Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI; ) is a member institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and was founded in November 2003, to create an Austrian research center for the newly developing fields of theoretical a ...

, the Acoustics Research Institute, the

Space Research Institute The Russian Space Research Institute (; SRI RAS, Russian abbreviation: ИКИ РАН, IKI RAN) is the leading organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences on space exploration to benefit fundamental science. It was formerly known as the Space ...

and the Institute for High Energy Physics (HEPHY), Wien.

Gallery of Research

During his term as president of the academy (1991–2003), Werner Welzig initiated the establishment of the Galerie der Forschung (English: Gallery of Research). In 2005 the Gallery organised its pilot event "Mapping controversies: the case of the genetically modified food", which was staged in the Alte Aula in Vienna.

Publications

Via its Austrian Academy of Sciences Press imprint, the academy publishes '' Medieval Worlds: Comparative & Interdisciplinary Studies'', a biannual

peer-reviewed Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work ( peers). It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review ...

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

academic journal An academic journal (or scholarly journal or scientific journal) is a periodical publication in which Scholarly method, scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. They serve as permanent and transparent forums for the ...

covering

Medieval studies Medieval studies is the academic interdisciplinary study of the Middle Ages. A historian who studies medieval studies is called a medievalist. Institutional development The term 'medieval studies' began to be adopted by academics in the opening ...

. Other publications are the ''

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum The ''Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum'' (CSEL) is an academic series that publishes critical editions of Latin works by late-antique Christian authors. There are about 100 volumes in the series; many are considered authoritative st ...

'' and '' eco.mont – Journal on Protected Mountain Areas Research and Management''. Also ''Memoranda of the Academy of Knowledge. Mathematical and natural science class'' (Denkschriften der Akademie der Wissenschaften), which was founded in 1850.

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Austrian Academy Of Sciences Organisations based in Vienna 1921 establishments in Austria Scientific organizations established in 1921 Members of the International Council for Science Members of the International Science Council Himalayan studies