Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, abbreviated MPA, is a research institute located in Garching, just north of Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It is one of the many scientific research institutes belonging to the Max Planck Society. The institute is widely considered to be one of the leading institutions in the world for theoretical astrophysics research. The source also notes that, according to Thomson Reuters, the Max Planck Society as a whole published more papers and accumulated more citations in physics and space science from 1999 to 2009 than any other research organization in the world, which places the institute within an unusually productive research network.