Formation | 19 October 1939 |
---|---|
Type | Governmental organisation |
Purpose | Fundamental research |
Headquarters | Campus Gérard Mégie, 16th arrondissement of Paris |
Official language | French |
President | Antoine Petit |
Main organ | Comité national de la recherche scientifique |
Budget | €3.8 billion (2021)[1] |
Staff | 33,000 (2021)[1] |
Website | www |
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (French: Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation[2] and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.[3]
In 2016, it employed 31,637 staff, including 11,137 tenured researchers, 13,415 engineers and technical staff, and 7,085 contractual workers.[4] It is headquartered in Paris and has administrative offices in Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Washington, D.C., Bonn, Moscow, Tunis, Johannesburg, Santiago de Chile, Israel, and New Delhi.[5]
From 2009 to 2016, the CNRS was ranked No. 1 worldwide by the SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR), an international ranking of research-focused institutions, including universities, national research centers, and companies such as Facebook or Google.[6] The CNRS ranked No. 2 between 2017 and 2021, then No. 3 in 2022 in the same SIR, after the Chinese Academy of Sciences and before universities such as Harvard University, MIT, or Stanford University.[7] The CNRS was ranked No. 3 in 2015 and No. 4 in 2017 by the Nature Index, which measures the largest contributors to papers published in 82 leading journals.[8][9][10] In May 2021, the CNRS ranked No. 2 in the Nature Index, before the Max Planck Society and Harvard University.[11]