Institutos privados de investigación "Pura" versus políticas públicas de ciencia y tecnología en la Argentina (1943-1955)

Abstract

In June 1943 took place a coup d'etat in Argentina that initiated a process of confrontation between an important sector of academic scientists and the de facto military government. As a result, many scientists lost their positions at universities, between them a group of biomedical scientists led by the physiologist Bernardo Houssay, who was to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 1947. From that moment on, supported by local philanthropists and the Rockefeller Foundation, Houssay's group began to promote the creation of a series of private research institutes. This process continued during the democratic government of Juan Perón (1946-1955). This article analyzes this "project" -its motivations and objectives- as a process of "parallel" institutionalization which was divergent from the initiatives promoted for science and technology by the public sector. This "splitting" of the institutionalization process, embodied in ideologies, institutional models and hardly compatible epistemic hierarchies, would have far-reaching consequences for the future development of research in Argentina. © 2013 CSIC.