Max Planck Society
Germany's leading basic research organisation, with 85 institutes. Its transfer arm, Max Planck Innovation, turned discoveries such as the FLASH MRI method into licences used worldwide.
- Sector
- Research
- Headquarters
- Munich, Bavaria
- Founded
- 1948
- Ownership
- Non-profit research organisation (registered association)
- Known for
- FLASH MRI
- Website
- www.mpg.de
- Topics
- basic research technology transfer Max Planck Innovation FLASH MRI gravitational waves
What they do
The Max Planck Society runs 85 institutes and research facilities, four of them abroad, and employs about 26,700 people. It is funded mainly by the federal government and the German states, which provided slightly more than 2.2 billion euros in 2025. Its mission is basic research chosen by scientists rather than by markets.
Why it matters
Basic research does not stay basic. The society's technology transfer company, known as Garching Innovation until it was renamed Max Planck Innovation in 2006, has accompanied 4,975 inventions since 1970, concluded more than 3,000 commercialisation agreements and helped more than 190 companies get started since 1990. Licensing revenues total more than 585 million euros, and the single largest contributor is one patent: FLASH, the fast MRI method from Göttingen, which alone earned about 155 million euros.
Products to know
- FLASH MRI: the low flip angle imaging method that cut scan times by a factor of about 100 and became part of every modern MRI scanner.
- Gravitational wave technology from the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Hannover, which with Laser Zentrum Hannover supplied the 200 watt pre-stabilised lasers installed in Advanced LIGO between 2010 and 2012.
- Sutent (sunitinib), a cancer drug rooted in the work of Axel Ullrich at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, which pays sales-based royalties.
The German angle
The society is named after the physicist Max Planck and succeeded the Kaiser Wilhelm Society after the Second World War. Its model, independent institutes built around leading scientists, is widely copied. The FLASH story shows the other side: a research body willing to spend years and about three million Deutschmarks in court against the world's largest medical technology firms to defend a patent, and to win.
Sources
Star products by Max Planck Society
Stories
How a Göttingen MRI trick became the Max Planck Society's most lucrative invention
In 1985 a small team in Göttingen made MRI a hundred times faster. Then they spent years fighting GE, Siemens and Philips in court. The result: about 155 million euros and a technique in every scanner.
German science you use every day without knowing
Your alarm clock, your MRI scan, your Netflix stream and the map in your phone all lean on work done in German research institutes. Here is where, who and how it got out of the lab.
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Last reviewed 4 November 2026. Main source: www.mpg.de/facts-and-figures. Something out of date? Suggest a correction.