IBM Research
IBM Research is the research and development division for IBM, an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries. IBM Research is the largest industrial research organization in the world and has twelve labs on six continents.[1]
IBM employees have garnered six Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame, 19 National Medals of Technology, five National Medals of Science and three Kavli Prizes.[2] As of 2018, the company has generated more patents than any other business in each of 25 consecutive years, which is a record.[3]
In addition to the IBM Research Division, the IBM Scientific Centers, which were active in various functions from 1964 to the early 1990s, were another remarkable research unit. In contrast to the central control of the Research Division from the headquarters in Armonk in the USA, the IBM Scientific Centers were structured in a decentralized manner. Each center functioned as an integral part of the IBM organization in its respective region or country. This organization also financed the center and ultimately determined its content and strategic direction.The task of an IBM Scientific Center was to contribute with its research, its expertise and its cooperation projects for the benefit of the respective country and thus to contribute to the reputation of IBM in this country or this region.[59][60]
While the research laboratories of the IBM Research Division had to be very restrictive with regard to scientific cooperation projects with non-IBM institutions for patent reasons and other reasons, technical-scientific and application-oriented cooperation projects with universities and other public research institutions were an important part of IBM's mission for the scientific centers.[60] Because of this, the spectrum of activities of such a center was often very broad. For example, some research groups could deal with topics that can be assigned to basic[61] or product-oriented research,[62] while others dealt with application-oriented research topics, for example satellite-based soil classification.[63]
Descriptions of the thematic focus and research projects as well as a selection of references to the scientific publications of the individual centers, as far as they were still alive in 1989, can be found in.[59] A comprehensive description of the evolution, projects, and success stories of the IBM Heidelberg Scientific Center from its very beginning and to shortly before its end can be found in.[60]
The history of the IBM Scientific Centers began in 1964 with the founding of the first four centers in the USA (marked with * in the list below) and has subsequently grown to 26 centers worldwide in 1989. Their story ended in the early 1990s.