156
Fostering contacts between young researchers and the best in their fields is
particularly important for completing the training of researchers and keeping
them competitive. And it has been our policy from the beginning to send our
people to other centres and invite distinguished scientists to the
IAC. Depending on the resources available at any given time, we have made
use of programmes of grants, sabbaticals, etc. When the Institute was built on
its present site in the eighties, six comfortable rooms were prepared to enable
important astrophysicists coming to the Canaries to observe to stay with us
for a few days. These rooms served very well in promoting direct contact with
our young researchers. Quite a few of the fruitful collaborations of the IAC
were born of these encounters. In the same spirit, good use has been made of
the Winter Schools (described in Chap. 19), which continue to provide an
opportunity for our young doctoral students to get to know and interact with
the best and to delve into the most burning issues in astrophysics that are
covered each year.
In 1995 the IAC, with funding from the BBV Foundation, organized a
very special international colloquium. The great masters of astrophysics and
our young researchers gathered to examine still unresolved key astronomical
problems. For a week, a handful of students had the good fortune to lodge at
Hotel Botánico in Puerto de la Cruz with G. Burbidge, E. M. Burbidge,
M. S. Longair, D. Lynden-Bell, G. Münch, I. Novikov, D. Osterbrock,
B. E. J. Pagel, M. J. Rees, A. Sandage, and R. Sunyaev.
Cambridge University Press published the encounter under the title The
Universe at Large (Key Issues in Astronomy and Cosmology), and the IAC produced videos of the discussions. This book was a milestone, as some of the
best astrophysicists of the time, whose influence has spread beyond the IAC,
have commented to me. It was an off-the-beaten-track review of our knowledge of the Universe that is still relevant today and packed with suggestions
for present and future research.
As an organization grows and its activities diversify, it is easy for individuals
to confuse their own tasks with the aims of the organization. At the IAC, to
underline that research is the fundamental task, we have repeatedly made it
known that, except for researchers, all other personnel, the Director included,
were ‘support personnel’. All are necessary and indispensable, but strictly in
pursuance of quality astrophysical research. Observatories, technology, management, and so forth are not aims in themselves, but tools for doing research
and science outreach.
A research centre must have an advanced management system. We have
therefore striven, within the tight constraints imposed on a Spanish public
entity subject to a thousand bureaucracies, to equip ourselves with a modern
F. Sánchez
Fostering contacts between young researchers and the best in their fields is
particularly important for completing the training of researchers and keeping
them competitive. And it has been our policy from the beginning to send our
people to other centres and invite distinguished scientists to the
IAC. Depending on the resources available at any given time, we have made
use of programmes of grants, sabbaticals, etc. When the Institute was built on
its present site in the eighties, six comfortable rooms were prepared to enable
important astrophysicists coming to the Canaries to observe to stay with us
for a few days. These rooms served very well in promoting direct contact with
our young researchers. Quite a few of the fruitful collaborations of the IAC
were born of these encounters. In the same spirit, good use has been made of
the Winter Schools (described in Chap. 19), which continue to provide an
opportunity for our young doctoral students to get to know and interact with
the best and to delve into the most burning issues in astrophysics that are
covered each year.
In 1995 the IAC, with funding from the BBV Foundation, organized a
very special international colloquium. The great masters of astrophysics and
our young researchers gathered to examine still unresolved key astronomical
problems. For a week, a handful of students had the good fortune to lodge at
Hotel Botánico in Puerto de la Cruz with G. Burbidge, E. M. Burbidge,
M. S. Longair, D. Lynden-Bell, G. Münch, I. Novikov, D. Osterbrock,
B. E. J. Pagel, M. J. Rees, A. Sandage, and R. Sunyaev.
Cambridge University Press published the encounter under the title The
Universe at Large (Key Issues in Astronomy and Cosmology), and the IAC produced videos of the discussions. This book was a milestone, as some of the
best astrophysicists of the time, whose influence has spread beyond the IAC,
have commented to me. It was an off-the-beaten-track review of our knowledge of the Universe that is still relevant today and packed with suggestions
for present and future research.
As an organization grows and its activities diversify, it is easy for individuals
to confuse their own tasks with the aims of the organization. At the IAC, to
underline that research is the fundamental task, we have repeatedly made it
known that, except for researchers, all other personnel, the Director included,
were ‘support personnel’. All are necessary and indispensable, but strictly in
pursuance of quality astrophysical research. Observatories, technology, management, and so forth are not aims in themselves, but tools for doing research
and science outreach.
A research centre must have an advanced management system. We have
therefore striven, within the tight constraints imposed on a Spanish public
entity subject to a thousand bureaucracies, to equip ourselves with a modern
F. Sánchez