Invisible College

It iswell knownthat the term“invisible college” is used to describe a community of researchers. This termin contemporary meaning was coined in the 1970s, although it was known much earlier. Robert Boyle (1627–1691), for example, has used the notion of “our philosophical college”. This probably characterises even better the meaning of such a community because nowadays there are fewer face-to-face meetings and sometimes researchers know each other only by published papers. So actually, the term“network” could also be used, but inmy opinion “invisible college” has more life in it. Probably my sabbaticals in Cambridge, especially at Sidney Sussex College, have left an imprint in my memory about the relationships in colleges. In what follows, I try to describe my “invisible college”, which has been formed step-bystep.