The Solvay Institute of Sociology assumed its first “definitive form” (Solvay 1902/1906: 26) on November 16, 1902, when its founder Ernest Solvay, a wealthy Belgian chemist, industrialist, and philanthropist, inaugurated the original edifice of SIS in Parc Léopold (BS 2006). Under the guidance of its first director, Emile Waxweiler, SIS expressed a “conception of a sociology open to all of the disciplines of the human sciences: ethnology, of course, but also economics and psycho-physiology, contact with which was facilitated by the proximity of the Institute of Physiology” (Vatin 1996: 486). While SIS is now part of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and known more simply as that university’s Institute of Sociology, the approach instigated by Solvay and Waxweiler still serves as methodological framework: a synergy between basic and applied research involving interdisciplinary studies firmly anchored in social life (IS 2007).
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