Short answers, pulled from the story.
The French Academy of Sciences was founded in 1666 by Louis XIV, at the suggestion of his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Its first meeting took place on the 22nd of December 1666 in the King's library in Paris.
Marguerite Perey, a student of Marie Curie, became the first woman admitted as a correspondent member in 1962. The first female full member was Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat, elected in 1979. Marie Curie and Irène Joliot-Curie were excluded during the three centuries when women were barred from membership.
In 1818 the academy held a competition on the properties of light. Committee member Siméon Denis Poisson argued that Augustin-Jean Fresnel's wave theory predicted an impossible bright spot in the center of a circular object's shadow. Committee head Dominique-François-Jean Arago tested this by fixing a 2-mm metallic disk to glass with wax, and the spot appeared exactly as predicted, confirming the wave nature of light.
The French Academy of Sciences distributes about 80 prizes each year. These include the Grande Médaille, awarded annually to a scholar who has made a decisive contribution to science, and the Leconte Prize, awarded annually since 1886.
Women were excluded from membership in the French Academy of Sciences for three centuries. The ban was broken in 1962 when Marguerite Perey was admitted as a correspondent member, followed by Yvonne Choquet-Bruhat as the first full female member in 1979.
Napoleon Bonaparte was elected a member of the academy in 1798 and became its president three years later, in connection with his Egyptian expedition. In 1803 he reorganized the academy, abolishing the Second class because it contained political scientists he considered potential critics of his government, and redistributing its members into new classes for literature and the fine arts.