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European industry turns to the academics to secure its future

Nature volume 406, pages 809–811 (2000)Cite this article

In Europe, the days of the chemical industry's great company laboratories, with their rich tradition of fundamental research, are all but gone. For nigh on a hundred years they were key players in basic chemistry, and industry-based research collected accolades and Nobel prizes. Driven by economic necessity and the restructuring following global consolidation, most firms have shifted their research focus so that it is now firmly product-orientated and much narrower in scope than in the past.

Although the phenomenon is too new to have been turned into a set of comprehensive and definitive pan-European statistics, Merbach's comments ring true, and are supported by observations made by academics and industrialists from all corners of Europe. Slowly, much of the chemical industry's in-house research is becoming short term.

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  1. science and technology writer based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

    Helen Gavaghan

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Gavaghan, H. European industry turns to the academics to secure its future. Nature 406, 809–811 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35021184

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