Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Austrian Academy of Sciences stands in central Vienna as the country’s leading body for non-university basic research. Founded in 1847 as the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften, it traces its origins to Leibniz’s 1713 proposal for an academy modelled on London and Paris. The academy soon began publishing key historical sources and widened its work into natural sciences. A 1921 law secured its place in the First Republic, and from the mid-1960s it became the main institution for fundamental research outside universities. Among its past members are Nobel laureates such as Schrödinger, Hess and Lorenz, and its former president Zeilinger won the physics prize in 2022. The academy runs 25 research institutes divided into two divisions: mathematics and natural sciences, and humanities and social sciences. In humanities it includes the Institute for Ancient Culture, known for work at Carnuntum and Ephesos, and the Vienna Institute of Demography. Natural science institutes range from the Gregor Mendel Institute to the Institute for Quantum Optics and the Space Research Institute. The academy also conducts socio-cultural research in the Tibetan-speaking Himalayas and central Asia. Cooperation agreements link some institutes with partners such as Boehringer Ingelheim. Visitors can explore the Gallery of Research, set up during Werner Welzig’s presidency in the Alte Aula. The academy’s press publishes journals like Medieval Worlds and the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Its Denkschriften series, begun in 1850, remains a key outlet for scholarly findings. The building itself houses these activities and offers a view of Vienna’s academic life.