Short answers, pulled from the story.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was established by the Massachusetts legislature on the 4th of May, 1780, during the American Revolution. It was founded by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other Founding Fathers of the United States.
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 sixty-two incorporating fellows who signed on at the founding came from political, professional, and commercial circles across Massachusetts.
Astronomer Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected to the Academy, in 1848.
Current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. Since the founding in 1780, the Academy has had 14,343 members in total.
Daedalus is the Academy's quarterly journal, published by the MIT Press on behalf of the Academy. It launched in the 1950s and has been fully open-access since January 2021.
In July 2013, The Boston Globe exposed Leslie Berlowitz for falsifying her credentials, faking a doctorate, and consistently mistreating her staff. Berlowitz subsequently resigned from the presidency.