American Academy of Arts and Sciences

• 1. Introduction

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  The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was born in the middle of a revolution. In 1780, with the War of Independence still raging, John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and a group of other Founding Fathers found time to charter a learned society. They did it with a specific purpose written into the legislation: to cultivate every art and science that might advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people. That is not the language of a club for scholars. It is a political statement about what a republic owes its citizens. More than two centuries later, the Academy still operates from its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and its membership now stretches to over 5,700 people across the United States and around the world. How did a wartime institution become one of the most enduring learned societies in American history? And what does it mean, exactly, to elect someone to it?

• 2. Founding in Revolution

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  The Massachusetts legislature established the Academy on the 4th of May, 1780. Sixty-two incorporating fellows signed on from the start, drawn from political, professional, and commercial circles across the state. The diversity was intentional. The founders did not want a society of scientists alone. They wanted a body that reflected the full range of serious intellectual and civic life. In 1781, the Academy made its first class of new members, and the choices signaled the ambition of the project. Benjamin Franklin and George Washington were elected, alongside several international honorary members. It is worth pausing on that detail: the Academy looked beyond American borders from its very first year of operation. The initial volume of Academy Memoirs appeared in 1785, giving the organization a publishing record almost immediately. Its Proceedings followed more than sixty years later, in 1846.

• 3. A Society Opens Up

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  Astronomer Maria Mitchell became the first woman elected to the Academy in 1848, a milestone that arrived decades before women could vote in national elections. The story of membership is also a story of gradual broadening. Today the Academy includes not only scientists and scholars, but also writers, artists, and representatives from a wide range of professions and public life. Since the founding, more than 10,000 fellows have been elected in total. The current membership carries more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. Of the Academy's 14,343 members since 1780, Harvard University alone accounts for 1,406 affiliations, with MIT at 611, Yale at 433, the University of California, Berkeley at 425, and Stanford at 404. Membership comes through a nominating petition, a review, and an election process, meaning peers select peers.

• 4. Research and Public Policy

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  Since the second half of the twentieth century, independent research has become central to what the Academy does. Arms control emerged as one of its signature concerns in the late 1950s, a period when nuclear anxiety was reshaping every serious institution's sense of mission. The Academy also served as the catalyst in establishing the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In the late 1990s, the Academy built a new strategic plan organized around four major areas: science, technology, and global security; social policy and education; humanities and culture; and education. In 2002, a visiting scholars program launched in association with Harvard University. More than 75 academic institutions across the country have since become Affiliates of the Academy, supporting that program and other initiatives.

• 5. Daedalus and the Humanities

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  In the 1950s, the Academy launched its journal Daedalus, a name drawn from the mythological craftsman who built wings and flew too close to consequence. The journal reflected a broader intellectual and socially-oriented shift in the Academy's identity. It is now published quarterly by the MIT Press on behalf of the Academy, and since January 2021 it has been fully open-access, meaning anyone can read it without a subscription. The Academy also runs the Humanities Indicators project, which equips researchers, policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, and humanities councils with statistical tools for answering basic questions about humanities education, the humanities workforce, funding levels, and public impact. That project is modeled on the Science and Engineering Indicators, published biennially by the National Science Board as required by Congress.

• 6. A President and a Scandal

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  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. The episode was a reminder that no institution is immune from the gap between its stated values and the conduct of its leadership. The Academy had been chartered to honor dignity and virtue; its president had misrepresented her own. The presidency recovered. Jonathan Fanton served from 2014 to 2018, David W. Oxtoby from 2019 to 2024, and Laurie L. Patton has held the office since January 2025.

• 7. Five Classes, Thirty Specialties

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  As of 2023, the Academy divides its membership into five classes and thirty specialties. Class I covers mathematical and physical sciences, running from mathematics and statistics through physics, chemistry, astronomy, engineering, and computer sciences. Class II spans the biological sciences. Class III takes in social and behavioral sciences, including economics, political science, law, and archaeology. Class IV covers arts and humanities, with sections for philosophy, history, literature, visual arts, performing arts, and religious studies. Class V groups public affairs, business, and administration. That architecture is itself a statement. By placing a journalist alongside a mathematician and a novelist alongside a neuroscientist within the same membership, the Academy insists that knowledge does not sort cleanly into silos. The breadth is deliberate, rooted in the founding charter's call to cultivate every art and science.