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A recently published study entitled Notgemeinschaften der Wissenschaft ( Emergency Associations of Science ) takes a comprehensive and critical look at the history of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), examining science-driven research funding in Germany in the first half of the organisation s 100-year existence. Historian Professor Dr. Patrick Wagner traces the development of the DFG from the founding of its predecessor organisation in 1920, through the Weimar Republic and the National Socialist era to its re-establishment after the Second World War and its development in the Federal Republic of Germany up until the early 1970s. Spanning a historical arc of five decades and three political systems, the study sheds light on the roots of the DFG s role in research funding and the research system - in which it continues to be a defining force - as well as examining the relationship between science and the humanities and politics in Germany
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The most promising vaccine against the coronavirus to date is also an example of the long-term value of curiosity-driven basic research and its funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation). The so-called mRNA vaccine platform, which the Mainz-based company BioNTech uses in its Covid-19 vaccine developed jointly with the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, can be traced back to preliminary work carried out from 2006 to 2008 in a project within a DFG-funded Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) on cancer research at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. This in turn was also tied to previous DFG-funded research.
The project was led by the later founder and current CEO of BioNTech, Professor Dr. U?ur ?ahin, whose name and person are closely associated with the development of the BNT162b2 vaccine, which will be deployed immediately following its approval in the United Kingdom and its anticipated approval in the USA and the EU. In addition to