Colin Macilwain | Feb 1, 2010 | 10+ min read
By Colin Macilwain Fork in the Road Will the new European Research Council lead EU science to success or lose its way? Illustrations by Tomasz Walenta nce in a generation, perhaps, a new research agency is born that does unprecedented things. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) got going (after 5 years of argument) in 1951 and its budget hit $1 billion 32 years later, in 1983. The budget of the UK Medical Research Council, which was