Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência

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Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science
Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência
AbbreviationSBPC
Formation8 July 1948; 75 years ago (1948-07-08)
TypeNonprofit
Location
Official language
Portuguese
President
Renato Janine Ribeiro
Websiteportal.sbpcnet.org.br

Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (Portuguese for Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science) is a Brazilian

British Association for the Advancement of Science (founded 1831) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS, founded 1848).

The first president was Prof. Jorge Americano, and among the founders there were important scientific personalities of the country, such as Paulo Sawaya, José Reis, Maurício Rocha e Silva, Gastão Rosenfeld and José Ribeiro do Vale, Otto Guilherme Bier, Henrique da Rocha Lima, Alberto Carvalho da Silva, Helena Nader and others.

The Society has individual members as well as other Brazilian scientific societies and associations which can become affiliate to SBPC. The current president is Dr. Ennio Candotti, a physicist. Honour presidents are Aziz Ab'Sáber, Crodowaldo Pavan, José Goldemberg, José Leite Lopes, Oscar Sala, Ricardo de Carvalho Ferreira, Sérgio Henrique Ferreira and Warwick Estevam Kerr.

SBPC's first flagship publication was

public understanding of science named after him). The journal's ambition was to be like Science
, AAAS' scientific publication.

The greatest endeavour of SBPC has been the organization of yearly scientific conferences at national and regional level, since its year of birth, and without interruption. In the 1970s, during the oppression of

civil liberties by the military regime, these conferences became an important public forum for discussion of issues on political freedom, since they were more or less left alone by the military repression apparatus, which acted hugely and mercilessly against mass media communication, student, workers and political organizations. The first conference was held in Campinas, São Paulo, in 1949 and had 104 participants. In the next meetings, in Curitiba (1950) and Belo Horizonte (1951), increasing participation and enthusiasm followed, with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences
first involvement, as well as of other scientific societies.

Another significant publications are Jornal da Ciência (Science Newspaper), a daily news email service, site and printed publication; and ComCiência, an on-line scientific journalism review, edited by the Laboratory of Advanced Studies of Journalism (Labjor) of the State University of Campinas.

SBPC has spawned a number of initiatives with the objective of popularizing science and serving science education. One of them is the Instituto Ciência Hoje (Science Today Institute), a not-for-profit non-governmental organization of public interest. ICH publishes Ciência Hoje magazine since 1982, Ciência Hoje das Crianças (Children's Science Today) since 1986, and a series of complementary didactic books for schools titled Ciência Hoje na Escola (Science Today at the School) since 1996. Since 1997, the Institute also maintains an Internet site, "Ciência Hoje On-line".

Bibliography

  • Fernandes, A.M. A construção da ciência no Brasil e a SBPC: Editora da UnB/CNPq/ANPOCS., Brasília, 1990. (In Portuguese)

External links

See also

  • Brazilian science and technology