Sir

Your Editorial 'Supporting the future' (Nature 453, 958; 2008) and News Feature 'The research revolution' (Nature 453, 975–976; 2008) rightly point out that the European Research Council (ERC) will change the future of European science funding for the better. But the conclusion that most of the ERC's young-investigator research grants go to the top three of European research — the United Kingdom, France and Germany — disguises a less impressive performance by these countries when the numbers of research grants awarded are considered relative to the overall population or gross domestic product (GDP) (see table).

Table 1 Analysis of ERC grant awards by country
Full size table

It seems that the countries where the greatest number of grants are obtained per capita — and hence with the most efficient young scientists — are Cyprus, Israel, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Bulgaria, which won just one grant, does better than the traditional strongholds in terms of grants in relation to GDP, and Hungary with six is in third position.

Germany, along with Portugal, Norway and the Czech Republic, does poorly, trailing Italy and Greece in grants per GDP. This might be partly because Germany doles out plenty of its own young-investigator grants, which are worth as much as the highly competitive ERC grants. Young German researchers, unlike their Italian counterparts, for example, might therefore not feel so desperate to pursue European money.

What other surprises may come to light, after further analysis and contextualization of the useful numbers provided by this first competition for ERC young-investigator grants?