  Scientific research is and was at all times a transnational (global)
activity. In this respect, it crosses several borders: national, cultural, and
ideological. Even in times when physical borders separated the scientific
community, scientists kept their minds open to the ideas created beyond the
walls and tried to communicate despite all the obstacles. An example of such
activities in the field of physics is the travel in the year 1838 of a group of
three scientists through the Western Europe: Andreas Ettingshausen (professor
at the University of Vienna), August Kunzek (professor at the University of
Lviv) and P. Marian Koller (director of the observatory in Chremsminster, Upper
Austria). 155 years later a vivid scientific exchange began between physicists
from Austria and Ukraine, in particular, between the Institute for Condensed
Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv and the
Institute for Theoretical Physics of Johannes Kepler University Linz. This
became possible due to the programs financed by national institutions, but it
had its scientific background in already knotted historic scientific networks,
when Lviv was an international center of mathematics and in Vienna the 'School
of Statistical Thought' arose. Due to the new collaboration, after the breakup
of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became the first country to join the Middle
European Cooperation in Statistical Physics (MECO) founded in the early 1970s
with the aim of bridging the gap between scientists from the Eastern and
Western parts of Europe separated by the iron curtain.
