French National Centre for Scientific Research


The French National Centre for Scientific Research is the French state research organisation and is the largest public research body in Europe and the second largest research organisation in the world.
In 2020, it employed over 32,000 staff, including more than 16,000 tenured researchers, 10,000 engineers and technical staff, and 8,000 contractual workers. It is headquartered in Paris and has administrative offices in Brussels, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore, Washington, D.C., Bonn, Moscow, Tunis, Johannesburg, Santiago de Chile, Israel, and New Delhi.

Organization

The CNRS operates on the basis of research units, which are of two kinds: "proper units" are operated solely by the CNRS, and Joint Research Units are run in association with other institutions, such as universities or INSERM. Members of Joint Research Units may be either CNRS researchers or university employees. Each research unit has a numeric code attached and is typically headed by a university professor or a CNRS research director. A research unit may be subdivided into research groups. The CNRS also has support units, which may, for instance, supply administrative, computing, library, or engineering services.
In 2026, the CNRS had 1100 Joint Research Units in France, 80 international research units and 10 representation offices abroad.
The CNRS is divided into 10 national institutes:
The National Committee for Scientific Research, which is in charge of the recruitment and evaluation of researchers, is divided into 47 sections. Research groups are affiliated with one primary institute and an optional secondary institute; the researchers themselves belong to one section. For administrative purposes, the CNRS is divided into 18 regional divisions.

Employment

Researchers who are permanent employees of the CNRS, equivalent to lifelong research fellows in English-speaking countries, are classified in two categories, each subdivided into two or three classes, and each class is divided into several pay grades.
In principle, research directors tend to head research groups, but this is not a general rule.
Employees for support activities include research engineers, studies engineers, assistant engineers and technicians. Contrary to what the name would seem to imply, these can have administrative duties.
Following a 1983 reform, the candidates selected have the status of civil servants and are part of the public service.

Recruitment

All permanent support employees are recruited through annual nationwide competitive campaigns. Separate competitives campaigns are held in each of the forty disciplinary fields covered by the institution and organized in sections. In the context of the competition, the section is made up of an eligibility jury, which reads the application files, selects some for the orals, holds the orals, and draws up a ranked list of potential candidates, submitted to the admission jury, which validates this ranking; the admission jury can make adjustments within this list. At the end of the admissions jury, the results are announced.
The competition is governed by very strict, well-defined legal rules, including the sovereignty and impartiality of the jury and the rules governing conflicts of interest: candidates are strictly forbidden to have any contact with a member of the jury, and no one may put pressure on the jury in any way whatsoever. If a member of the jury belongs to the candidate's family, he or she may not sit on the jury. The same applies if a candidate has worked extensively with one of the jury members over the past two years, or has a direct and regular relationship with him or her.
In 2020, the average age at recruitment was 33.9 years for chargés de recherche, with wide variations between sections.
In 2020, the average recruitment rate was 21.3 applicants for each single open position, again with variations to this rate between sections. The most competitive sections are usually Section 2, Section 35, Section 36, and Section 40. In 2023, in Section 35, there were 158 applicants for four open positions, hence a recruitment rate of 2.53%. By comparison, Section 12 received 33 applications for five open positions.

History

The CNRS was created on 19 October 1939 by decree of President Albert Lebrun. Since 1954, the centre has annually awarded gold, silver, and bronze medals to French scientists and junior researchers. In 1966, the organisation underwent structural changes, which resulted in the creation of two specialised institutes: the National Astronomy and Geophysics Institute in 1967 and the Institut national de physique nucléaire et de physique des particules in 1971.

Reform proposals

The effectiveness of the recruitment, compensation, career management, and evaluation procedures of CNRS have been under scrutiny. Governmental projects include the transformation of the CNRS into an organization allocating support to research projects on an ad hoc basis and the reallocation of CNRS researchers to universities. Another controversial plan advanced by the government involves breaking up the CNRS into six separate institutes. These modifications, which were again proposed in 2021 by think tanks such as the Institut Montaigne, have been massively rejected by French scientists, leading to multiple protests. Important reforms were also recommended in the 2023 assessment report of the HCERES.

Leadership

Past presidents

was appointed president on 20 January 2010. His position combined the previous positions of president and director general.
Several of the French Nobel Prize winners were employed by the CNRS, particularly at the start of their careers, and most worked in university laboratories associated with the CNRS.

Nobel laureates in Physics

Despite being a fundamental science institution, in the Reuters ranking of most innovative institutions, the CNRS was ranked No. 8 worldwide and No. 3 in Europe based on total patents by the institution between 2012 and 2017 that were subsequently granted by patent offices. The Webometrics Ranking of World Universities ranked CNRS third worldwide. In 2025, the CNRS was ranked No. 3 worldwide in the SCImago Institutions Rankings.