American Academy of Arts and Sciences

American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other founding fathers of the United States. It is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Membership in the academy is achieved through a thorough petition, review, and election process. The academy's quarterly journal, Dædalus, is published by the MIT Press on behalf of the academy. The academy also conducts multidisciplinary public policy research.
History
The Academy was established by the Massachusetts legislature on May 4, 1780, charted in order "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The sixty-two incorporating fellows represented varying interests and high standing in the political, professional, and commercial sectors of the state. The first class of new members, chosen by the Academy in 1781, included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as well as several international honorary members. The initial volume of Academy Memoirs appeared in 1785, and the Proceedings followed in 1846. In the 1950s, the Academy launched its journal Daedalus, reflecting its commitment to a broader intellectual and socially-oriented program.
Since the second half of the twentieth century, independent research has become a central focus of the Academy. In the late 1950s, arms control emerged as one of its signature concerns. The Academy also served as the catalyst in establishing the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In the late 1990s, the Academy developed a new strategic plan, focusing on four major areas: science, technology, and global security; social policy and education; humanities and culture; and education. In 2002, the Academy established a visiting scholars program in association with Harvard University. More than 75 academic institutions from across the country have become Affiliates of the Academy to support this program and other Academy initiatives.
The Academy has sponsored a number of awards and prizes, throughout its history and has offered opportunities for fellowships and visiting scholars at the Academy.
In July 2013, the Boston Globe exposed then president Leslie Berlowitz for falsifying her credentials, faking a doctorate, and consistently mistreating her staff. Berlowitz subsequently resigned.
Projects
The Humanities Indicators
A project of the Academy that equips researchers, policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, humanities councils, and other public institutions with statistical tools for answering basic questions about primary and secondary humanities education, undergraduate and graduate education in the humanities, the humanities workforce, levels and sources of program funding, public understanding and impact of the humanities, and other areas of concern in the humanities community. It is modeled on the Science and Engineering Indicators, published biennially by the National Science Board as required by Congress.
Membership
Founding members
Charter members of the Academy were John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Bacon, James Bowdoin, Charles Chauncy, John Clarke, David Cobb, Samuel Cooper, Nathan Cushing, Thomas Cushing, William Cushing, Tristram Dalton, Francis Dana, Samuel Deane, Perez Fobes, Caleb Gannett, Henry Gardner, Benjamin Guild, John Hancock, Joseph Hawley, Edward Augustus Holyoke, Ebenezer Hunt, Jonathan Jackson, Charles Jarvis, Samuel Langdon, Levi Lincoln, Daniel Little, Elijah Lothrup, John Lowell, Samuel Mather, Samuel Moody, Andrew Oliver, Joseph Orne, Theodore Parsons, George Partridge, Robert Treat Paine, Phillips Payson, Samuel Phillips, John Pickering, Oliver Prescott, Zedekiah Sanger, Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant, Micajah Sawyer, Theodore Sedgwick, William Sever, David Sewall, Stephen Sewall, John Sprague, Ebenezer Storer, Caleb Strong, James Sullivan, John Bernard Sweat, Nathaniel Tracy, Cotton Tufts, James Warren, Samuel West, Edward Wigglesworth, Joseph Willard, Abraham Williams, Nehemiah Williams, Samuel Williams, and James Winthrop.
Members
From the beginning, the membership, nominated and elected by peers, has included not only scientists and scholars, but also writers and artists as well as representatives from the full range of professions and public life. Throughout the Academy's history, 10,000 fellows have been elected, including such notables as John Adams, John James Audubon, Sissela Bok, Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Joseph Henry, Washington Irving, Thomas Jefferson, Edward R. Murrow, Martha Nussbaum, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Jonas Salk and Eudora Welty.
International honorary members have included Jose Antonio Pantoja Hernandez, Albert Einstein, Leonhard Euler, Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Charles Darwin, Otto Hahn, Jawaharlal Nehru, Pablo Picasso, Liu Guosong, Lucian Michael Freud, Luis Buñuel, Galina Ulanova, Werner Heisenberg, Alec Guinness, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Menahem Yaari, Yitzhak Apeloig, Zvi Galil, Haim Harari, and Sebastião Salgado.
Astronomer Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected to the Academy, in 1848.
The current membership encompasses over 5,700 members based across the United States and around the world. Academy members include more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.
Of the Academy’s 14,343 members since 1780, 1,406 are or have been affiliated with Harvard University, 611 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 433 with Yale University, 425 with the University of California, Berkeley, and 404 with Stanford University. The following table includes those institutions affiliated with 300 or more members.
† Excludes members affiliated exclusively with associated national laboratories.
Classes and specialties
As of 2023, membership is divided into five classes and thirty specialties.
Class I – Mathematical and physical sciences
Section 1. Mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics
Section 2. Physics
Section 3. Chemistry
Section 4. Astronomy, astrophysics, and earth sciences
Section 5. Engineering and technologies
Section 6. Computer sciences
Class II – Biological sciences
Section 1. Biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular biology
Section 2. Cellular and developmental biology
Section 3. Neurosciences
Section 4. Evolution and ecology
Section 5. Medical sciences
Class III – Social and behavioral sciences
Section 1. Psychological sciences
Section 2. Economics
Section 3. Political science
Section 4. Law
Section 5. Archaeology and anthropology
Section 6. Sociology, demography, and geography
Section 7. Education
Class IV – Arts and humanities
Section 1. Philosophy
Section 2. History
Section 3. Literature and language studies
Section 4. Literature
Section 5. Visual arts
Section 6. Performing arts
Section 7. Religious studies
Class V – Public affairs, business, and administration
Section 1. Journalism, media, and communications
Section 2. Business, corporate, and philanthropic leadership
Section 3. Educational and academic leadership
Section 4. Public affairs and public policy
Section 5. Scientific, cultural, and nonprofit leadership
Presidents, 1780–present
1780–1790 James Bowdoin
1791–1814 John Adams
1814–1820 Edward Augustus Holyoke
1820–1829 John Quincy Adams
1829–1838 Nathaniel Bowditch
1838–1839 James Jackson, M.D.
1839–1846 John Pickering
1846–1863 Jacob Bigelow
1863–1873 Asa Gray
1873–1880 Charles Francis Adams
1880–1892 Joseph Lovering
1892–1894 Josiah Parsons Cooke
1894–1903 Alexander Agassiz
1903–1908 William Watson Goodwin
1908–1915 John Trowbridge
1915–1917 Henry Pickering Walcott
1917–1919 Charles Pickering Bowditch
1919–1921 Theodore William Richards
1921–1924 George Foot Moore
1924–1927 Theodore Lyman
1927–1931 Edwin Bidwell Wilson
1931–1933 Jeremiah D. M. Ford
1933–1935 George Howard Parker
1935–1937 Roscoe Pound
1937–1939 Dugald C. Jackson
1939–1944 Harlow Shapley
1944–1951 Howard Mumford Jones
1951–1954 Edwin Herbert Land
1954–1957 John Ely Burchard
1957–1961 Kirtley Fletcher Mather
1961–1964 Hudson Hoagland
1964–1967 Paul A. Freund
1967–1971 Talcott Parsons
1971–1976 Harvey Brooks
1976–1979 Victor Frederick Weisskopf
1979–1982 Milton Katz
1982–1986 Herman Feshbach
1986–1989 Edward Hirsch Levi
1989–1994 Leo Beranek
1994–1997 Jaroslav Pelikan
1997–2000 Daniel C. Tosteson
2000–2001 James O. Freedman
2001–2006 Patricia Meyer Spacks
2006–2009 Emilio Bizzi
2010–2013 Leslie C. Berlowitz
2014–2018 Jonathan Fanton
2019– David W. Oxtoby
See also
American Philosophical Society
National Academy of Engineering
National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine)
National Academy of Sciences
List of American Academy of Arts and Sciences members
References
External links
Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol 1, 1783
Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.1 (1846) – Vol.57 (1922) at Biodiversity Heritage Library
1780 establishments in the Province of Massachusetts Bay
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Member organizations of the American Council of Learned Societies
Organizations established in 1780