Founded in 1994, the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin is one of the more than 80 research institutes of the Max Planck Society. Since its inception, the Institute has continually expanded the boundaries of the field of the history of science—critically interrogating basic concepts, bringing multiple disciplines into dialog, and experimenting with novel research methods.

Research at the Institute investigates how knowledge is produced, circulated, and transformed across time and place. We study the practices, institutions, and infrastructures through which scientific inquiry takes shape, and how scientific, technological and medical practices both respond to—and in turn refashion—the social, political, and material orders in which they operate. Our research addresses the history of knowledge in its global diversity and across the full span of human history, with specific areas of focus determined by the research agendas of the Institute’s departments and research groups.

The Institute currently comprises two departments: “Knowledge Systems and Collective Life” (KSCL), directed by Etienne Benson, and “Artifacts, Action, Knowledge” (AAK), directed by Dagmar Schäfer. The directors administer the Institute jointly, with the position of Managing Director rotating among them. Former directors at the Institute were Lorraine Daston, Jürgen Renn, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger. 

The Institute is home to a permanent research group on “China in the Global System of Science” led by Anna Lisa Ahlers, and also hosts a number of independent research groups. In 2022, the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities” (IMPRS-KIR) joined the Institute with a doctoral program in partnership with the Freie Universität, the Humboldt Universität, and the Technische Universität–Berlin. The Institute also engages in many other collaborations with research institutions around the world.

The Institute’s research is supported by a number of administrative and research-support teams, including Administration, Digital Humanities, IT, the Library, Research Communication and Management, as well as support staff based within each department and research group. We foster a welcoming and inclusive environment where employees and visitors from around the world work together to illuminate science’s past in order to better understand its present and future.