In a bucolic valley near Bonn, a giant 100-meter-wide radio telescope listens to the faint beeps and squawks of objects at the very edge of the known universe. At a research center in Tübingen, scientists struggle to understand the elusive biochemical secrets by which the brain performs its wizardry. Inside a sprawling complex near Munich, researchers heat ionized gases to temperatures of many millions of degrees in hopes of taming the almost unlimited power of thermonuclear fusion. These varied projects are all being conducted under the auspices of one organization —West Germany's Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, which has led the rebuilding of German science from the rubble of World War II.
Unique among the world's leading scientific organizations, the Max Planck Society operates 52 separate institutions, all pursuing different lines of basic research. The semiautonomous units range in size from the 1,000-man Plasma Physics Institute, site of the fusion experiments, to the tiny four-man Limnological Institute, which has pioneered the use of rush and reed cultures to purify industrial-waste water. The institutes do no secret research, accept few military or industrial contracts, and can pick their own areas of investigation. Largely government-funded (about 90%), they have experienced little political unrest or "brain drain" of scientists to the U.S. And they have enjoyed a steady increase in funding in the past decade (up 300% to a current budget of $160 million a year).
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the society is that it exists at all. It is successor to the old Kaiser Wilhelm Society, founded in 1911 under the patronage of Germany's last emperor. By the '20s, the original society had attracted a galaxy of scientific stars, including Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Fritz Haber and Max Planck, whose quantum theory is the cornerstone of modern physics. When the Nazis came to power in the '30s, the society's fortunes sagged. Planck, who was head of the society during those turbulent years, tried to stop the Nazis from interfering with research, but he could not prevent the forced exodus of some 2,000 Jewish scientists. Finally, when World War II ended, the great research organization was as shattered as Germany itself. Renamed in honor of Planck in 1948, the society began its slow postwar revival. At the Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Konrad Lorenz's experiments with geese and fish shed important new light on aggression and other behavioral characteristics. At the Institute for Cell Chemistry, Feodor Lynen won a Nobel Prize for his work on fat metabolism. Another Nobel Prize went to Manfred Eigen of the Institute of Physical Chemistry for his success in measuring chemical reactions that last no more than a billionth of a second. More recently the society has branched into less familiar terrain. Under the direction of Physicist Carl Friednch von Weizsäcker, it has set up the new Institute for the Study of Life in the Technological-Scientific World. Its mission is to investigate pressing contemporary issues including the role of science and the problems of developing countries.