Max Planck Society

The Max Planck Society is an independent, nonprofit association of research institutes in Germany. It is publicly funded by both the federal government and the 16 state governments. One of the top nonacademic research institutions in the world, it is focused on pure research, also known as basic or fundamental research (i.e., research that increases knowledge and may answer questions but is not specifically aimed at finding solutions to particular problems). The value of pure research is immeasurable, but it rarely finds significant funding in the private sector, since it may not produce marketable results and, indeed, may produce results that are not even patentable. While the private sector once invested significant money in pure research, that heyday is in the past. This makes publicly ...