The Max Planck Institute for Meteorology (MPI-M) in Hamburg is operated by the Max Planck Society, a state-funded research institution beyond university walls. It was officially inaugurated in February 1975. The major goal the new institute was to develop climate models, integrating ocean-atmosphere interaction, and investigate natural climatic change.
The history of the foundation of the MPI-M is a relatively short one. It only took few months for the board of the Max Planck Society to decide on the foundation and to appoint a director. Until 1974, meteorological research was hardly represented in the Society’s programme. None of its institutes pursued specific climatological or meteorological research. But in the late 1973, the Max Planck Society received the offer from the Fraunhofer Society to take over one of their institute, which pursued basic research in maritime and radiometeorology. This offer initiated a debate within the Max Planck Society whether meteorology was a topic important enough to be included in the Society’s agenda.
Several experts in the field of climatology, meteorology and atmospheric sciences were invited to this discussion, amongst them also Hermann Flohn, Christian Junge, and Bert Bolin. Particularly Hermann Flohn had already advocated long before that Germany needed an institution focusing on climate change research, because neither the German universities nor the German Weather Service encouraged theoretical meteorology and studies on long-term climate variations.
Internationally, smog, acid rain and extreme climate events reinforced an environmental awareness (Radkau 2014, and many others). Debates about the risks of economic grow and environmental pollution resulted in initiatives and theories like the Club of Rome or the Gaia Hypothesis, and created the notion of the earth as a complex interconnected system. It was the setting in which several conferences on climate change took place in the USA. In Germany, the social-liberal government introduced in 1973 a Federal Office of Environmental Matters (the later Federal Environmental Agency).
Research on climate gained more and more interest also in Germany, but at this point there was still no research institution in Germany that focused entirely on climate science. When the discussion at the Max Planck Society was initiated it promptly decided to fill this gap.
The MPI-M founding process indicates just how much climate research was considered to be relevant. Traditionally, a Max Planck institute is set up for an individual outstanding and established researcher who receives the opportunity to develop his research interest by building up his own institute, also called the “Harnack Principle” (Renn et al. 2014). In other words, a well-established researcher would be appointed to set up an institute around his own research. But in the case of the MPI-M the Society first decided to set up the institute and then searched for an eligible director. This “topic first” approach and the fast founding process show the enormous interest the subject enjoyed
The research of this new institute focused entirely on the development of climate models including ocean-atmosphere interrelations, and on model-based climate prediction. The awareness that the ocean-atmosphere interactions were crucial for the understanding of climate had grown, and it influenced the choice of the director and the research agenda: appointed director was Klaus Hasselmann, a German physicist and oceanographer with experience in ocean modelling instead of climate modelling.
Sources:
Archival documents at the Archive of the Max Planck Society in Berlin.
Gerwin, Robert 1975: "Den Klimaänderungen auf der Spur", MPG-Spiegel 5, pp. 1-2.
Hennig, Eckaart, Marion Kazemi 2011: Chronik der Kaiser-Wilhelm-/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften 1911-2011. Daten und Quellen, Berlin.
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 1977: Jahrbuch, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck Ruprecht.
Radkau, Joachim 2014: The Age of Ecology, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Renn, Jürgen, Dieter Hoffmann Birgit, Kolboske (eds.): 'Dem Anwenden muss ein Erkennen vorausgehen'. Auf dem Weg zu einer Geschichte der Kaiser-Wilhelm-/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Proceedings vol. 6. Berlin: Epubli GmbH, Edition Open Access.
