A research institute is an establishment endowed for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies scientific research, there are also many research institutes in the social sciences as well, especially for sociological and historical research purposes. Some research institutes are associated with public education museums such as the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.1
Famous research institutes
The earliest research institutes were the astronomical observatory complexes set up by medieval Muslim astronomers. They were built for the purpose of housing large astronomical instruments and for scientific research staff carrying out astronomical research and observations. The first of these research institutes was the 9th-century Baghdad observatory built during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, though the most famous were the 13th-century Maragheh observatory and 16th-century Istanbul observatory of al-Din.2
Another early research institute was Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg complex on the island of Hven, a 16th-century astronomical laboratory set up to make highly-accurate measurements of the stars. In the United States there are numerous notable research institutes including Bell Labs, The Scripps Research Institute3 and SRI International.
Footnotes
- ^ Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute Official Site
- ^ E. S. Kennedy (1962), "Reviewed Work: The Observatory in Islam and Its Place in the General History of the Observatory by Aydin Sayili", Isis 53 (2): 237-239.
- ^ The Scripps Research Institute
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