Putting the "I" in IHY

Book excerpt: Putting the “I” in IHY This book is about international cooperation. It demonstrates how the power of scienti?c imagination and investigation can bring together people form all continents in almost all countries around the globe. In presenting this impressive result, we can understand, how much unifying force the quest for understanding our universe and using outer space for that purpose have. Astronomy is far away from being a “political” area of science. But is has enormous political effects – and all of these effects are positive. This book about the international aspects and achievements of the “International Heliophysical Year (IHY) 2007” can be regarded as a compendium of the fertile impacts of conducting research in this ?eld. The main focus, as the title implicates, is the international cooperation, which has emerged from this grassroots initiative. North and South, industrialized and developing countries have been coordinating their efforts and have been learning from each other in a mutual partnership under a joint understanding of sharing the scienti?c bene?ts. Through this, trans-border networks have been created and scienti?c as well as cultural exchange took place.