Central Leather Research Institute

Central Leather Research Institute or CLRI is the world's largest leather research institute in terms of research papers and patents. The institute located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu was founded on 24 April 1948 as a constituent laboratory under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

History

Soon after India attained independence in 1947, the first government of the country led by Jawaharlal Nehru focused on industrialisation. As a part of that, several research laboratories and institutes, such as National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi, National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, National Metallurgical Laboratory in Jamshedpur, Fuel Research Institute in Dhanbad, Glass and Ceramic Research Institute in Kolkata, were set up across the country. On 24 April 1948, the then Central Minister of Industry and Supply Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee laid the foundation stone in the Guindy region of Chennai.Madras State awarded 75 acres (30 ha; 0.117 sq mi) to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and ₹4000 (US$59) towards expenses for levelling the land and making it suitable for building construction.

Research institute

A research institute is an establishment endowed for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research. Although the term often implies natural science research, there are also many research institutes in the social sciences as well, especially for sociological and historical research purposes.

Famous research institutes

In the early medieval period, several astronomical observatories were built in the Islamic world. The first of these was the 9th-century Baghdad observatory built during the time of the Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun, though the most famous were the 13th-century Maragheh observatory, 15th-century Ulugh Beg Observatory.

The earliest research institute in Europe was Tycho Brahe's Uraniborg complex on the island of Hven, a 16th-century astronomical laboratory set up to make highly accurate measurements of the stars. In the United States there are numerous notable research institutes including Bell Labs, The Scripps Research Institute,Beckman Institute, and SRI International. Hughes Aircraft used a research institute structure for its organizational model.