ICRANet, the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Network, is an international organization which promotes research activities in relativistic astrophysics and related areas. Its members are four countries and three Universities and Research Centers: Armenia, the Federative Republic of Brazil, Italian Republic, the Vatican City State, the University of Arizona (USA), Stanford University (USA) and ICRA.
ICRANet headquarters are located in Pescara, Italy.
History of ICRANet foundation: ICRA and ICRANet
ICRA and ICRANet
In 1985, the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics ICRA was founded by Remo Ruffini (University of Rome "La Sapienza") together with Riccardo Giacconi (Nobel Prize for Physics 2002), Abdus Salam (Nobel Prize for Physics 1979), Paul Boynton (University of Washington), George Coyne (former director of the Vatican observatory), Francis Everitt (Stanford University) and Fang Li-Zhi (University of Science and Technology of China).
The Statute and the Agreement establishing ICRANet were signed on March 19, 2003, and they were recognized in the same year by the Republic of Armenia and the Vatican City State. ICRANet has been created in 2005 by a law of the Italian Government, ratified by the Italian Parliament and signed by the President of the Italian Republic Carlo Azeglio Ciampi on February 10, 2005. The Republic of Armenia, Italian Republic, the Vatican City State, ICRA, the University of Arizona and the Stanford University are the founding members.
On September 12, 2005, ICRANet Steering Committee was established and had its first meeting: Remo Ruffini and Fang Li-Zhi were appointed respectively Director and Chairman of the Steering Committee. On December 19, 2006 ICRANet Scientific Committee was established and had its first meeting in Washington DC. Riccardo Giacconi was appointed Chairman and John Mester Co-Chairman.
On September 21, 2005 the Director of ICRANet signed, together with the then Ambassador of Brazil in Rome Dante Coelho De Lima the adhesion of the Federative Republic of Brazil to ICRANet. The entrance of Brazil, requested by the then President of Brazil Luiz Ignácio Lula Da Silva has been unanimously ratified by the Brazilian Parliament. On August 12, 2011, the then President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff signed the entrance of Brazil in ICRANet.
Marcel Grossmann meetings
By the beginning of the twentieth century the new branch of mathematics, tensor calculus, was developed in the works of Gregorio Ricci Curbastro and Tullio Levi Civita of the University of Padua and the University of Rome "La Sapienza". Marcel Grossmann of the University of Zurich who had a deep knowledge of the Italian school of geometry and who was close to Einstein introduced to him these concepts. The collaboration between Einstein and Grossmann was essential for the development of General Relativity.
Remo Ruffini and Abdus Salam in 1975 established the Marcel Grossmann meetings (MG) on Recent Developments in Theoretical and Experimental General Relativity, Gravitation, and Relativistic Field Theories, which take place every three years in different countries, gathering more than 1000 researchers. MG1 and MG2 were held in 1975 and in 1979 in Trieste; MG3 in 1982 in Shanghai; MG4 in 1985 in Rome; MG5 in 1988 in Perth; MG6 in 1991 in Kyoto; MG7 in 1994 at Stanford; MG8 in 1997 in Jerusalem; MG9 in 2000 in Rome; MG10 in 2003 in Rio de Janeiro; MG11 in 2006 in Berlin; MG12 in 2009 in Paris; MG13 in 2012 in Stockholm; MG14 in 2015 and MG15 in 2018 both in Rome. Since its foundation, ICRANet has always played a leading role in the organization of those meetings.
Celebration of the International Year of Astronomy 2009
ICRANet has been Organizational Associate of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and supported the global coordination of IYA2009 financially. In this occasion ICRANet organized a series of international meetings under the general title "The Sun, the Star, the Universe and General Relativity" including: the 1st Zeldovich meeting (Minsk, Belarus), the Sobral Meeting (Fortaleza, Brazil), the 1st Galileo - Xu Guangqi meeting (Shanghai, China), the 11th Italian-Korean Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics (Seoul, South Korea) and the 5th Australasian Conference - Christchurch Meeting (Christchurch, New Zealand).