Science Beyond Europe and America: Ten Institutions of Asia and the Middle East, 1857 to 1939

The University of Calcutta was established in 1857 as one of the first universities in South Asia on the modern Western pattern. Its science college drew teachers such as Prafulla Chandra Ray, Jagadish Chandra Bose, C. V. Raman and Satyendra Nath Bose, which is why so much early twentieth century Indian physics and chemistry was done there.

Founded in 1876 by Mahendralal Sircar in Kolkata, this was the first Indian institution devoted to research in the sciences. C. V. Raman carried out the experiments there that led to the discovery of the Raman effect and his Nobel Prize in Physics.

Founded in 1877 as the first imperial university of Japan, it became the center of modern Japanese research through its faculties of science, medicine and engineering. Hantaro Nagaoka and Masatoshi Koshiba, whose neutrino detector work earned the Nobel Prize in Physics, worked there.

Its roots lie in the National Council of Education set up in Bengal in 1906 to give scientific and technical teaching under Indian control. It became a university in 1955 and is known for its departments of physics, chemistry and engineering.

Jagadish Chandra Bose founded this institute in Calcutta in 1917 to carry on his work in physics and in the responses of plants. It is the oldest research institute of its kind in India and now works in the physical and life sciences.

Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Chaim Weizmann in 1918 and opened in 1925, it is a public research university in Jerusalem. Einstein was among its first supporters and left his papers to it, and its scientists have worked in physics, chemistry, mathematics and the life sciences.

This national research university in Sapporo grew from the Sapporo Agricultural College founded in 1876 and was founded as a university in 1918. It is known for agriculture, fisheries, life sciences, catalysis and chemistry, and Akira Suzuki, who shared the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, worked there.

Founded in 1921, it is the oldest university in Bangladesh, a public research university covering the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities. Satyendra Nath Bose taught physics there.

Established in 1934 in Rehovot as the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. It was renamed in 1949 for Chaim Weizmann, its founding director and later the first president of Israel, and is a leading center for basic research in the natural and exact sciences.

Established in 1939 as Nagoya Imperial University, it teaches and does research across the natural sciences, medicine and the humanities. Noyori, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and several other Nobel laureates in physics and chemistry worked there.