The Austrian Academy of Sciences ("Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften") is a legal entity under the special protection of the Federal 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. In 2009, the Austrian Academy of Sciences was ranked 82nd among the 300 topmost research institutions in the world by Webometrics Ranking of World Research Centers

Webometrics Ranking of World Universities

The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, also known as Ranking Web of World Universities, is ranking system for the world's universities based on a composite indicator that takes into account both the volume of the Web contents and the visibility and impact of these web publications...

 ^{http://research.webometrics.info/index.html}.

History

In 1713, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Gottfried Leibniz

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....

 suggested to establish such an Academy, inspired by the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 and the Académie des Sciences

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 research...

. The "Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien" was finally established by Imperial Patent on May 14, 1847.

The Academy soon began extensive research. In the humanities the Academy started with researching and publishing important historical sources of Austria. Research in natural sciences also covered a wide variety of topics.

The 1921 federal law guaranteed the legal basis of the Academy in the newly founded First Republic of Austria. And 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, and its past members have included Christian Doppler

Christian Doppler

Christian Andreas Doppler was an Austrian mathematician and physicist.-Life and work:Christian Doppler was raised in Salzburg, Austria, the son of a stonemason. Doppler could not work in his father's business because of his generally weak physical condition...

, Theodor Billroth

Theodor Billroth

Christian Albert Theodor Billroth was a German-born Austrian surgeon and amateur musician....

, Anton Eiselsberg

Anton Eiselsberg

Anton Freiherr von Eiselsberg was born on July 31, 1860 at Schloss Steinhaus, Upper Austria.A student of Theodor Billroth, Eiselsberg served as professor of medicine at Utrecht University and at University of Königsberg before being appointed head of the First Department of Surgery at the...

, Eduard Suess

Eduard Suess

Eduard Suess was a geologist who was an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean.Born in London to a Jewish Saxon merchant, when he was three his family relocated toPrague,...

, Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Boltzmann

Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...

, Paul Kretschmer

Paul Kretschmer

Paul Kretschmer 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....

, Hans Horst Meyer

Hans Horst Meyer

Hans Horst Meyer was a German pharmacologist. He studied medicine and did research in pharmacology. The Meyer-Overton hypothesis on the mode of action on general anaesthetics is partially named after him...

, Roland Scholl

Roland Scholl

Roland Heinrich Scholl 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, and various discoveries about polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.-Early life and...

, and the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...

 winners Julius Wagner-Jauregg

Julius Wagner-Jauregg

Julius Wagner-Jauregg was an Austrian physician, Nobel Laureate, and Nazi supporter.-Early life:...

, Victor Hess, Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Schrödinger

Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...

 and Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Lorenz

Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch...

.

Among the Academy's numerous publications is the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum

The Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum is a series of critical editions of the Latin Church Fathers published by a committee of the Austrian Academy of Sciences....

.

Gallery of Research

During his term as president of the Academy (1991-2003), Prof. Werner Welzig initiated the establishment of the Galerie der Forschung. In 2005 the Gallery organised its pilot event "Mapping controversies

Mapping controversies

Mapping controversies is a course taught in Science studies, stemming from the writings of the French sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour. It focuses exclusively on the controversies surrounding scientific knowledge rather than the established scientific facts or outcomes...

: the case of the genetically modified food", which was staged in the Alte Aula in Vienna.