Short answers, pulled from the story.
The National Academy of Sciences was founded on the 3rd of March 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Act of Incorporation. The act named 50 charter members, many of them linked to the informal Scientific Lazzaroni network.
Geophysicist Marcia K. McNutt is the current president of the National Academy of Sciences, a role she has held since 2016. She is the first woman to hold the position, and her term is set to expire on the 30th of June 2026.
As of 2026, the National Academy of Sciences has 2,705 active members and 557 international, non-voting members, with 3,218 of them living. Up to 120 new members and up to 30 foreign citizens are elected annually.
The National Academy of Sciences Building sits at 2101 Constitution Avenue in northwest Washington, D.C., on the National Mall. Designed by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue in a neoclassical style, it was dedicated in 1924.
Harvard University has the most members of any school across the Academy's entire history, 331 in all. Excluding medical school affiliations, the University of California, Berkeley leads instead, with 255 members.
In 2005, the National Academy of Sciences joined the other G8 national science academies plus those of Brazil, China, and India in a joint statement arguing that the science of climate change was clear enough to justify prompt action. In 2010, 255 of its members signed a letter in Science magazine denouncing political assaults against climate change researchers, after Virginia's attorney general sought records from climate scientist Michael E. Mann.