Spirited Academy Faces Painful Cuts, Consolidation

摘要

Hungary's 172-year-old Academy of Sciences has fared better than most in Europe's former Eastern bloc. It has survived empires, wars, and military occupation, as well as this decade's transition from communism to democracy, while keeping control of its institutes and their purse strings. But as Hungary comes to terms with the harsh reality of a free-market democracy, this independently minded academy is now moving toward a painful consolidation forced by lean budgets and changes in research orientation. Hungary's research institutes "are in such a financial state that something has to be done," says Norbert Kroo, director of the academy's Solid State Physics Institute in Budapest and a recent president of the European Physical Society.