European Science Foundation

The European Science Foundation was established in 1974 to serve as a coordinating body of European research funding and research performing organisations. It now provides practical support and advice to member organisations.

[Page 1720]The ESF was formed to define Europe’s research agendas and to be the voice for European science by its member organisations, which by 2000 consisted of 80 members, coming from 30 different countries, even beyond Europe itself. In addition, ESF was set out to cover all scientific and scholarly disciplines, ranging from the ‘hard’ sciences of space and nuclear physics to the breadth of domains researched by humanities scholars and social scientists. In such a crucible, odd ‘interdisciplinary’ mixtures were also bound to emerge, as for instance in 2009 with an improbable convergence ...