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 founded back in 1913, has not yet reached £1 billion. The European Research Council (ERC) was first conceived in 2002, opened its doors in February 2007, and its budget will pass €1 billion (close to $1.5 billion) next year.
This speed of implementation is unprecedented in global science. Andreu Mas-Colell, the affable Spanish economist who serves as the ERC’s second secretary general, points out that if the then-tiny NSF was described in the 1950s as a “minor miracle,” then the arrival of the ERC is surely a full-fledged one.
You might expect cash-strapped scientists to be celebrating this miracle ...
