“If science is expected to grow so great, both in the comprehensiveness of its subject and also in depth, that the human mind will not be able to embrace it, that the life span of man will not be long enough to penetrate to its fringes in time to enlarge it, could several people not form a team and accomplish jointly what no single person can accomplish? Instead of returning with Shaw to Methuselah, can we find a new way to enlarge the capacity of human intellect by the juxtaposition of several individual intellects rather than by extending a single one?”
E.P. Wigner: The Limits of Science, 1950
The Wigner Research Centre for Physics was founded on 1 January 2012 by the merging of two former research institutes of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: the Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, and the Research Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics. In our Research Centre there are 40 research groups. Their research interests cover diverse topics ranging from particle physics to space physics, and from theoretical physics to applied research.
Wigner Research Centre for Physics deals with the following main research areas as research activities: Experimental and theoretical particle physics, nuclear physics, general theory of relativity and gravitation, fusion plasma physics, space physics, nuclear materials science, mainly in the Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics; Experimental and theoretical solid state physics, statistical physics, nuclear physics, optics, and materials sciences mainly in the Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics.
