“Funding for research, especially fundamental research, is still inadequate.” Helga Nowotny, former President of the European Research Council

such as Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein, left Vien- schools, ranking 14th in Europe. Recently the Academy of na to blossom abroad. The Circle of philosophers Sciences embarked on a new approach, founding basic and scientists, active from 1924 to 1936, ended in tragedy research centers as limited liability companies under when its founder, Moritz Schlick, was murdered by a Austrian law, such as the Gregor Mendel Institute (GMI), fascist student. the Research Center for Molecular Medicine (CeMM) The Academy of Sciences began to see itself as a German and the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA). institution; after the Anschluß in 1938, management po- Yet the revitalization of the research base is “still in sitions were filled by Nazi loyalists and even Nobel laure- progress,” Jakob Eder, from the Academy of Sciences, ates were forced out. Similarly, Vienna’s excellent medi- told Metropole. “Major events were definitely the fall of With almost cal tradition, culminating in four Nobel Prizes, was wiped the Iron Curtain” in 1989 “and integration in the Europe- 190,000 students, out. In those darkest of years, Viennese scientists sought an Union” in 1995, Eder continued. Crucially, Nowotny Vienna is the city refuge in the free world in droves and very few ever re- pointed out, “Austrian universities were granted autono- with the biggest turned again. my only recently” and since the turn of the millennium, student population It takes generations to build a research system and scien- “general improvements, including the internationaliza- in the German-­ tific culture of world standing. The brain drain of the 1930s tion of Austrian universities, are among the more recent speaking world, surpassing Berlin and half-hearted denazification after World War II pro- and positive developments.” But she added: “Funding for and Munich. duced stagnation. Indeed, “the paradoxical result was that research, especially fundamental research, is still inade- The University of many former professors in the humanities who had been quate.” The Austrian Science Fund (FWF), she added, “is Vienna, dubbed strongly involved with the regime were re-installed early definitely underfinanced with an annual budget of less Hauptuni by the on. Some of them continued to dominate their respective than €200 million.” In fact, industrial and applied re- Viennese, is the field in the humanities until retirement,” Helga Nowotny, search fare a lot better in Austria, a country with a strong oldest and biggest institution of its former President of the European Research Council, Chair engineering tradition. The FWF’s annual report 2015 re- kind in the of the Board of Trustees of IWM in Vienna, told Metropole. gretted that “organisations funding basic research in German-speaking It has taken several decades for medical research to those leading nations in the science sector can currently world with more crawl out of the mire. But its efforts have paid off; in 2014, access between two to three times more per capita fund- than 93,000 MedUni Vienna joined the world’s top 50 of medical ing than the FWF.” students and 9,700 employees.

SCIENCE A Magnet for Keen Minds Vienna brought hen refugee scientists Paul F. Europe, it has more students than Berlin or Mu- Lazarsfeld (sociologist at nich, boasts a proud history of discovery, and a re- forth Wittgenstein, ) and spectable number of Nobel laureates. On the eve of Freud and Oskar Morgenstern (econo- World War I, the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Schrödinger. mist at Princeton) returned Vienna had reportedly become the world’s leading to Vienna in the late 1950s, they were appalled by research center. Vienna was also a hotspot for the Today, the city Wthe lack of intellectual potential. “No brain, no initia- nascent social sciences. is again a hotbed tive, no collaboration,” Lazarsfeld noted in a letter. Armed with a generous grant from the Ford Founda- FROM GREATNESS TO INFAMY of ideas. tion, they set up the Institute for Advanced Studies Following the Austro-Hungarian monarchy’s col- (IHS) in 1962 – it would go on to train a new genera- lapse in 1918, Vienna gradually lost its edge in sci- BY ROXANNE POWELL tion of social scientists in cutting-edge economics, ence. By the early 1930s, the pall of authoritarian political science and . politics had smothered curiosity and creativity.

Yet Vienna is one of the oldest university cities in Towering philosophers of science and the mind, MAIR / BARBARA VIENNA OF UNIVERSITY PHOTOS:

30 october 2016 SCIENCE Humanities 50+ R&D employees

Natural sciences 10 to 49 R&D employees

Manufacturing 1 to 9 R&D employees 15.5 % 24.4 % Life sciences Information and 332 communication 211 technologies

Life Sciences R&D Information and communication departments technology by category 13.2 % 180 Manufacturing

36.3 % 10.6 % Humanities 495 145 15.5 % 24.4 % 0 2,5 5 km 332 Vienna’s research facilities are scattered all throughout the 211 city, with specializedNatural centerssciences clustered around universities. Source: Open Data Vienna Life Sciences

Information and communication It’s also tough in the social sciences, as Alice Vadrot, tanglement state.” Anton Zeilinger, physicist and Presi- technology a young Franco-Austrian political scientist and dent of the Academy of Sciences, rejoiced: “The experi- Schrödinger Fellow based at the University of Cam- ment opens the door for a future quantum internet with 13.2 % Manufacturing 180 bridge, explained.“ When I received my PhD from the more than two partners and it allows them to communi- in June 2013, leaving Austria was cate more than one bit per photon.” 36.3 % 10.6 % Humanities the only chance I saw to continue my research and pur- The life sciences cluster in Vienna is also “widely re- 495 145 sue an academic career,” she said. “In Austria, the situ- garded as being among the top” in its field, Nowotny add- Natural sciences ation could be much better, if we take into account that ed. In a recent (world) breakthrough, Jürgen Knoblich’s it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.” group at IMBA was able to grow cerebral organoids Another challenge, Robert Musil from the Academy (small developing human brains) from human stem of Sciences argues, is the transition between cells. This may well lead to new treatments for neurolog- a German-speaking scientific culture and an ical disorders. English-speaking one, which is moreover dominated The ICT cluster, brand named DigitalCity.Wien, has by hard sciences; here, “Vienna is some years behind,” flourished around the Vienna University of Technology Musil says. But there’s much more to science in Vien- (TU) in the 4th district. In another branch of technolo- na than universities and the academy. Nearly 1,500 re- gy, Johannes Homa started with 3D printing of ceram- search organizations of all shapes and sizes, half of ic components at the TU in 2006. A breakthrough in which are businesses, are thriving – from the diminu- 2010 led to a spinoff, Lithoz GmbH; this quickly became tive Sir Peter Ustinov Institute for Prejudice Research a world leader, printing implant materials for biomedi- and Prevention to the hundreds-strong IIASA. cal use, for example tailor-made bone replacement. The latest addition opened in 2009 on the outskirts In addition to classical funding tasks, The Vienna of Vienna. Remarkably, the Institute of Science and Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) seeks to ease Technology Austria (IST Austria) has already man- the path of bright young minds into science. One aged to make a name for itself. “More than half of its WWTF-funded Vienna Research Group for Young In- faculty are recipients of ERC grants, which makes it vestigators is looking into “good” bacteria. “The one of the most successful research institutions in Eu- world’s leading specialists in laboratory methods for rope,” said Nowotny. the study of microbes in their environment are in Vi- enna. This is why the Division of Microbial Ecology is THE MAN WHO GREW A BRAIN exciting for me,” Jillian Petersen, group leader, says. It’s hard to single out the next winner, but the Vienna The latest newcomer on the research scene is the Center for Quantum Science and Technology (VCQ) Vienna Humanities Festival, debuting in September and its Innsbruck counterpart may be in the running 2016. Vienna has come a long way towards regaining for a Nobel prize in physics. Uniquely, VCQ mixes fun- its place as a crucible for discovery and invention. It’s damental research with new technologies, such as a good place to be doing science, Musil explained, be- quantum computing. cause research facilities are not on some distant Last March, its Zeilinger Group reached a new mile- greenfield campus but right in the city center– close to

stone in quantum physics by creating a three-photon “en- music, the arts and all that Vienna has to offer. WIENER FORSCHUNG BUZZ IN DER MUSIL/EDER 2015 – LOCAL ILLUSTRATIONS:

32 october 2016