Science and technology in Brazil


Science and technology in Brazil has entered the international arena in recent decades. The central agency for science and technology in Brazil is the Ministry of Science and Technology, which includes the CNPq and Finep. This ministry also has a direct supervision over the National Institute for Space Research, the National Institute of Amazonian Research, and the . The ministry is also responsible for the Secretariat for Computer and Automation Policy, which is the successor of the SEI. The Ministry of Science and Technology, which the Sarney government created in March 1985, was headed initially by a person associated with the nationalist ideologies of the past. Although the new minister was able to raise the budget for the science and technology sector, he remained isolated within the government and had no influence on policy making for the economy.
With the new ministry, the science and technology agencies increased in size but lost some of their former independence and flexibility, and they became more susceptible to patronage politics. Most of the resources of the CNPq were channeled to fellowship programs procedures for quality control and no mechanisms to make the fellows active in the country's science and technology institutions. New groups competed for resources and control of the country's agencies of science, technology, and higher education. These groups included political parties, unionized university professors and employees, scientific societies, and special interest groups within the scientific and technological community. The SBPC shed its image as a semi-autonomous association of scientists to become an active lobbyist for more public resources and the protection of national technology from international competition. Brazil was ranked 52nd in the Global Innovation Index in 2025, up from 66th in 2019.

History

Brazilian science effectively began in the first decades of the 19th century, when the Portuguese royal family, headed by D. João VI, arrived in Rio de Janeiro, escaping from the Napoleon's army invasion of Portugal in 1807. Like almost all territories and regions of the New World, Brazil was a Portuguese colony, without universities, and a few cultural and scientific organizations. The former American colonies of the Spanish Empire, although having a largely illiterate population like Brazil, Portugal and Spain, had, however, a number of universities since the 16th century. This may have been a deliberate policy of the Portuguese colonial power, because they feared that the appearance of educated Brazilian classes would boost nationalism and aspirations toward political independence, as it had happened in the United States and several Latin American former Spanish colonies. However, throughout the centuries of Portuguese rule, Brazilian students were allowed and even encouraged to enroll at higher education in mainland Portugal. In addition, mainland Portugal's population at the time was also largely illiterate and had for most of those period a single university, the University of Coimbra, which educated Portuguese people from all the Empire, including from the colony of Brazil.
The first firm attempts of having a Brazilian science establishment were made around 1783, with the expedition of Portuguese naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, who was sent by Portugal's prime minister, the Marquis of Pombal, to explore and identify Brazilian fauna, flora and geology. His collections, however, were lost to the French, when Napoleon invaded Portugal, and were transported to Paris by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. In 1772, even before the establishment of the Science Academy of Lisbon, one of the first learned societies of both Brazil and the Portuguese Empire was founded in Rio de Janeiro - it was the Sociedade Scientifica, but lasted only until 1794. Also, in 1797, the first botanic institute was founded in Salvador, Bahia. During the late 18th century, the Real Academia de Artilharia, Fortificação e Desenho of Rio de Janeiro was created in 1792 through a decree issued by the Portuguese authorities as a higher education school for the teaching of the sciences and engineering. Both the engineering schools of the Rio de Janeiro Federal University and the Military Institute of Engineering were created and developed from the oldest engineering school of Brazil which is also one of the oldest in Latin America.
D. João VI gave impetus to all these accoutrements of European civilization to Brazil. In a short period, the government founded the Royal Naval Academy and the Royal Military Academy, the Biblioteca Nacional, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, the Medico-Chirurgical School of Bahia, currently known as Faculdade de Medicina under harbour of Universidade Federal da Bahia and the Medico-Chirurgical School of Rio de Janeiro.
Notable scientific expeditions organized by Brazilians were rare, the most significant one being that of Martim Francisco de Andrada e Silva and José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, in 1819.

During the Brazilian Empire

After independence from Portugal, declared by the King's son in 1822, D. Pedro I, the policies concerning higher learning, science and technology in Brazil came to a relative standstill. In the first two decades of the century, science in Brazil was mostly carried out by temporary scientific expeditions by European naturalists, such as Charles Darwin, Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied, Carl von Martius, Johann Baptist von Spix, Alexander Humboldt, Augustin Saint-Hilaire, Baron Grigori Ivanovitch Langsdorff, Friedrich Sellow, Fritz Müller, Hermann von Ihering, Émil Goeldi and others. This science was mostly descriptive of the fantastic Brazilian biodiversity of its flora and fauna, and also its geology, geography and anthropology, and until the creation of the National Museum, the specimens were mostly removed to European institutions.
In the educational area, a number of higher education institutions were founded in the 19th century, but for decades to come, most Brazilian students, still studied at European universities, such as the ancient University of Coimbra, in Portugal.
Things started to change after 1841, when the eldest son of D. Pedro I, Emperor D. Pedro II came to the throne when he was 15 years old. In the next 50 years, Brazil enjoyed a stable constitutional monarchy. D. Pedro II was an enlightened monarch who favored the arts, literature, science and technology and had extensive international contacts in these areas. The mainstay of Brazilian science and the seat of its first research laboratories was the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro, in existence until today. D. Pedro developed a strong personal interest and selected and invited many august European scientific personalities, such as von Ihering and Goeldi, to work in Brazil. He and his ministers, courtesans and senators often attended scientific conferences in the Museum. There, the first laboratory of physiology was founded in 1880, under João Baptista de Lacerda and Louis Couty. Unfortunately, the creation of research universities and institutes would only occur on the beginning of the 20th century - a long delay for the education, science and technology in Brazil.
The oldest scientific journal in Brazil, Archivos do Museu Nacional, was established in 1876.

Organization

Brazil today has a well-developed organization of science and technology. Basic research is largely carried out in public universities and research centers and institutes, and some in private institutions, particularly in non-profit non-governmental organizations. More than 90% of funding for basic research comes from governmental sources. Brazil is one of the three countries in Latin America with an operational Synchrotron Laboratory, a research facility for physics, chemistry, materials science and life sciences.
Applied research, technology and engineering are also largely carried out in the university sector and research centres, contrary to trends in more developed countries such as the United States of America, South Korea, Germany, Japan, etc.

Trends in science and technology

Creation of social organizations

Brazil's public research institutes and universities follow rigid rules that tend to make them difficult to manage. States may opt to develop their own research institutes and university systems but, as all laws and regulations are adopted at federal level, they all have to follow the same rules and regulations. Thus, they all come up against the same hurdles. These include extensive bureaucratic structures, an obligation to recruit staff, academic or otherwise, from among public servants, analogous career ladders and salary systems, an irregular flow of funds, overly complex procurement procedures and powerful unions in the civil service. A structural alternative was developed in 1998, with the creation of social organizations. These private, non-profit entities manage public research facilities under contract to federal agencies. They have the autonomy to hire staff, contract services, buy equipment, choose the topics and objectives of scientific or technological research and sign research contracts with private companies. The flexibility accorded to these social organizations and their management style have made them a success story in Brazilian science. As of 2015, there were six such organizations:
Embrapii is the most recent. It was established by the federal government in 2013 to stimulate innovation through a system of calls for proposals; only institutions and enterprises deemed eligible may respond to these calls, thus speeding up the whole process and offering applicants a greater chance of success; Embrapii was due to be assessed in late 2015.