American Association for the Advancement of Science

• 1. Introduction

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  The American Association for the Advancement of Science was born on the 20th of September 1848, inside the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Seventy-eight people were in the room. They represented a country that had no permanent national body to speak for science, no single organization to pool resources, to coordinate researchers across fields, or to advocate for the discipline itself. What those founders built that day would grow into the world's largest general scientific society, with more than 120,000 members. But the road from seventy-eight founding members to that scale was anything but smooth. How did a small reform movement of geologists and naturalists become a body that would document human rights abuses from space, plant scientists inside the halls of Congress, and publish one of the most widely read scientific journals on earth? That story begins not just with ambition, but with a very specific argument about Wind and Current Charts.

• 2. Seventy-Eight Founders

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  The organization that became the AAAS was not invented from nothing. It grew out of an earlier body, the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, which its members deliberately reformed and broadened at that September 1848 meeting in Philadelphia. The goal was to be the first permanent organization to promote science and engineering nationally and to represent researchers from across every scientific field, not just geology and natural history.

  William Charles Redfield was chosen as the society's first president. The founders selected him specifically because he had proposed the most comprehensive plans for the new organization. Under the first constitution, adopted at that same September 20 meeting, the core purpose was to promote scientific dialogue so that collaboration could happen more efficiently, and to advocate actively for more resources for the scientific community.

  Two days after the founding, on Friday afternoon the 22nd of September 1848, Redfield presided over a session that illustrated exactly what the founders had in mind. Matthew Fontaine Maury, a naval officer and member of the new society, gave a full scientific report on his Wind and Current Charts. He described how hundreds of ship navigators were sending abstract logs of their voyages to the United States Naval Observatory. "Never before was such a corps of observers known," Maury told the room.

  What followed was a textbook example of the scientific cooperation the founders had envisioned. William Barton Rogers, a professor at the University of Virginia who would later found the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed a resolution asking the Secretary of the Navy to help Maury obtain data from European navigators to extend his charts. The resolution passed. The committee to carry it out included Joseph Henry of Washington, Benjamin Peirce of Cambridge, James H. Coffin of Easton in Pennsylvania, and Stephen Alexander of Princeton. Maury left Philadelphia with, as the record puts it, "great hopes for the future."

• 3. Opening the Doors

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  In 1850, just two years after the founding, the AAAS accepted its first female members. Astronomer Maria Mitchell and entomologist Margaretta Morris were admitted that year. Science educator Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps followed in 1859. By 1860, total membership had grown from the original 78 to more than 2,000.

  The American Civil War brought the organization to a halt. The August 1861 meeting scheduled for Nashville, Tennessee, was postponed indefinitely after the outbreak of the first major engagement of the war at Bull Run. The AAAS stayed dormant throughout the conflict. When it came back to life, Frederick Barnard presided over the first revived meeting in New York City in 1866.

  The recovered AAAS took a notably open stance. It permitted any person, regardless of scientific credentials, to join. At the same time, it created a formal distinction by granting the title of Fellow of the AAAS to well-respected scientists within the organization. This two-tier structure allowed the society to remain broadly accessible while still recognizing scientific distinction.

  But openness alone could not shield the AAAS from competition. National Academy of Sciences was founded in 1863, and in the following decades a wave of new specialized societies drew members away: the American Chemical Society in 1876, the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, the Modern Language Association in 1883, the American Historical Association in 1884, the Geological Society of America in 1888, the National Geographic Society in 1888, and the American Physical Society in 1899. Compounding the problem, the society's third president, Alexander Dallas Bache, had used the AAAS as a lobbying tool for his own agency, the US Coast Survey, damaging its reputation with prominent scientists and diminishing its influence.

• 4. Science, the Journal

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  The partnership that would stabilize the AAAS came in 1900, when the journal Science became the society's official publication. The arrangement gave the AAAS a reliable stream of revenue through subscriptions and advertising at a moment when the organization needed financial grounding. In 1946, the AAAS became the sole owner of Science outright.

  The decades after World War II amplified the journal's reach dramatically. Public fascination with space flight, nuclear power, and the discovery of DNA drove growing interest in science across the United States, and Science's sales grew with that interest. Two editors in particular shaped the journal's commercial fortunes during this period: Dael Wolfle, who served from 1954 to 1970, and William D. Carey, who served from 1974 to 1985.

  The science family that grew around the flagship journal eventually expanded to include Science Signaling, Science Translational Medicine, Science Immunology, Science Robotics, and the interdisciplinary Science Advances, all peer-reviewed. The AAAS also published the non-peer-reviewed Science and Diplomacy, and through a Science Partner Journals program, it publishes on behalf of other organizations with a focus on online-only open access. The current CEO and executive publisher of Science is Sudip Parikh; the current Editor in Chief is Holden Thorp.

• 5. Speaking for Science

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  In 1973, the AAAS established its Congressional Fellowship program with a US$10,000 donation from William T. Golden. The program places Ph.D. scientists and engineers inside the federal government for one-to-two year stints: 130 positions in the executive branch, 5 in the legislative branch, and 1 in the judicial branch. The intention was to bring scientific expertise directly into policy-making.

  The organization's public advocacy grew more pointed in subsequent decades. Alan I. Leshner, who served as CEO from 2001 until 2015, published op-ed articles on how people integrate science and religion, and he opposed the insertion of non-scientific content, such as creationism or intelligent design, into school science curricula.

  In December 2006, the AAAS adopted an official statement on climate change. The statement read in part: "The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. The time to control greenhouse gas emissions is now."

  Two months later, in February 2007, the organization put satellite imagery to a different use, documenting human rights abuses in Burma. The following year it launched the Center for Science Diplomacy, dedicated to advancing international scientific cooperation and the broader relationships among partner countries. In 2012, facing a potential federal budget sequestration, the AAAS published op-eds, held events on Capitol Hill, and released analyses warning that the cuts would have severe consequences for scientific progress. The organization's affiliated network by that point included 262 societies and academies of science serving more than 10 million people, from the Acoustical Society of America to the Wildlife Society, and even non-mainstream groups like the Parapsychological Association.

• 6. Connecting Scientists and Journalists

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  In 1996, the AAAS launched EurekAlert!, an editorially independent nonprofit news release service covering science, medicine, and technology. EurekAlert! grew into a global clearinghouse: by early 2018, more than 14,000 reporters from more than 90 countries had registered for free access to embargoed materials, and more than 5,000 public information officers from 2,300 universities, journals, government agencies, and medical centers were credentialed to post releases through the system. The service operates in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, and, from 2007, in Chinese. In 1998, European science organizations responded by launching a competing service called AlphaGalileo.

  A separate initiative, SciLine, came later. Its launch was announced on the 27th of October 2017 in an article in Science. Its founding director was Rick Weiss, who previously served as communications chief at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and as a science reporter at the Washington Post. SciLine's stated mission is to increase the amount and quality of research-backed evidence in news stories by connecting journalists in the United States to scientists and validated scientific information.

  By July 2021, SciLine had fulfilled approximately 2,000 requests from 650 journalists through its expert-matching service alone. Its financial supporters include the Quadrivium Foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Rita Allen Foundation, and the Heinz Endowments, with the AAAS providing in-kind support. EurekAlert!, for its part, has attracted criticism for inconsistent press release standards and for contributing to what critics call churnalism, a reminder that connecting science to journalism is not without its own complications.

• 7. Fellowship and Recognition

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  Every year, the AAAS Council elects members who have distinguished themselves scientifically to the grade of Fellow, a designation abbreviated as FAAAS. Election is a peer honor; Fellows receive a certificate and a rosette pin. The fellowship carries weight precisely because it is conferred by colleagues rather than by an outside panel.

  Starting on the 15th of October 2018, the AAAS added a significant new provision: Fellow status can be revoked in cases of proven scientific misconduct, serious breaches of professional ethics, or when a Fellow no longer merits the status. The change was adopted specifically to limit the effects and tolerance of sexual harassment in the sciences.

  Past presidents of the AAAS have included explorer and geologist John Wesley Powell, who served in 1888; astronomer and physicist Edward Charles Pickering in 1912; anthropologist Margaret Mead in 1975; and biologist Stephen Jay Gould in 2000. The AAAS presidency itself follows an unusual three-year arc: the first year is served as president-elect, the second as president, and the third as chairperson of the board of directors. The annual awards program recognizes scientists, journalists, and public servants for contributions to science and to public understanding. Among the active awards is the Newcomb Cleveland Prize, the Philip Hauge Abelson Prize, and the Golden Goose Award, alongside several Kavli Science Journalism Awards spanning television, radio, online, magazine, newspaper, and children's science news categories.