Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences has occupied the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam since 1812, a 17th-century building that has outlasted empires, occupation, and the reinvention of science itself. It began not as a scholarly club but as a tool of conquest: Lodewijk Napoleon, who ruled the Netherlands as the Kingdom of Holland, founded it on the 4th of May 1808 under the name Koninklijk Instituut van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten. When Napoleon’s grip on Europe loosened and the occupation ended, the institute did not disappear. It was renamed, reorganised, and eventually reborn. What drives an institution to survive every upheaval for more than two centuries? And what does it mean, today, to be one of the roughly five hundred scientists and scholars chosen for life by their peers as members of the KNAW?

• 2. From Napoleon to Now

  ›

  Lodewijk Napoleon signed the founding decree on the 4th of May 1808, at a moment when the Netherlands existed as a client state of the French Empire. The academy’s original name in Dutch ran to nearly a full sentence: Koninklijk Instituut van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten, or Royal Institute of Sciences, Literature and Fine Arts. In 1816, once the French occupation had ended, the newly independent Dutch state renamed it, adding ‘Nederlandsch’ to assert a national identity. The institution was disbanded and re-established in 1851 under yet another name, Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, shedding its broad cultural mandate and sharpening its focus on science. It was not until 1938 that it took on its current title. Each renaming marks a pivot: from French-imposed institution, to post-occupation national body, to scientific academy, to the more capacious modern organisation that again embraces the humanities. The Gouden Ganzenveer, a Dutch award for contributions to writing and culture, was given to the institute in 1955, a recognition that its identity was never purely scientific.

• 3. The Trippenhuis

  ›

  Since 1812, the academy has been housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam, a building whose age predates the academy itself by well over a century. When the Society of Arts was established in 2014, it too made its home in what its own documents call the 17th-century Trippenhuis. The building is not merely an address. It is the physical constant in a story of repeated institutional reinvention, the one element that did not change when names, functions, and political sponsors changed around it.

• 4. Membership for Life

  ›

  Membership in the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences is conferred for life, and it cannot be applied for in the ordinary sense. The academy fills its ranks through co-optation, meaning existing members choose future ones. Nominations from outside the institution are accepted, but the decisive criterion is demonstrated scientific achievement. Each year no more than sixteen people are appointed to the academy’s roughly five hundred-strong membership. Two departments organise that membership: Sciences, covering mathematics, physics, astronomy, life sciences, and engineering sciences; and Humanities and Social Sciences, covering humanities, law, behavioural sciences and social sciences. Both departments have their own board and are further divided into sections. The ultimate authority over the entire institution rests with the general meeting of all members, the united gathering of both departments. In 2011, the academy introduced a new membership system under which no additional corresponding members would be created, consolidating the categories into regular and foreign membership.

• 5. Advice and Influence

  ›

  Robbert Dijkgraaf, who became president in 2008, used his inaugural address to warn about the low level of science funding in the Netherlands compared with almost all other western countries. His predecessor Frits van Oostrom had made the same point in his leaving address earlier that year. That two successive presidents raised the same alarm, in the same formal moment, signals how central the funding question had become to the institution’s sense of purpose. The academy’s advisory role spans parliament, ministries, universities, research institutes, funding agencies and international organisations. It offers advice both when asked and without being asked, covering everything from specific scientific questions to career policy for researchers to the Netherlands’ share of contributions to large international scientific projects. Providing a forum for international scientific cooperation is listed as one of its core functions, alongside acting as an umbrella organisation for research institutes engaged in basic and strategic research.

• 6. Research Institutes

  ›

  The academy oversees a network of research institutes that collectively stretch from the 17th century Dutch Golden Age to 21st-century stem cell biology. The Westerdijk Fungal Biodiversity Institute has been affiliated since 1904, the oldest of the group. The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience was formed in 2005 as a merger of two older bodies: the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research, established in 1909, and the Netherlands Ophthalmic Research Institute, established in 1988. The NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, affiliated since 1999, was founded in 1945, just as the Second World War ended. The International Institute of Social History, affiliated since 1979, dates back to its founding in 1935. The Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, affiliated since 2001, was founded in 1851, the same year the academy itself was disbanded and re-established. The Fryske Akademy, focused on Frisian language and culture and affiliated since 1990, was founded in 1938, the same year the KNAW took its current name. The Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands joined in 1992, and the Rathenau Instituut, which examines the relationship between science, technology and society, joined in 1994 after operating under the name NOTA since 1987.

• 7. The Young Academy

  ›

  De Jonge Akademie, the Young Academy, was founded in 2005 as an explicitly separate society for younger researchers within the KNAW. Members must be between 25 and 45 years old, selected for research excellence, and their membership runs for a fixed term of five years rather than the lifetime appointment of the main academy. Ten members are elected each year. The Young Academy was modelled on the German Junge Akademie, and together these two bodies were then used as models for the Global Young Academy, making the Dutch experiment the template for an international movement of early-career scientific societies.

• 8. The Society of Arts

  ›

  When the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences established the Society of Arts in 2014, it was reconnecting with the "Fine Arts" in its oldest name. The Society of Arts, or Akademie van Kunsten, draws from architecture, visual arts, dance, film, photography, literature, music, and performing arts. Its stated purpose is to serve as the place for debate about the value of art in society and about the relationship between art and science. Membership is also for life and is determined by nomination, open to anyone who wishes to put forward a leading artist. The Society launched with 19 members and adds 6 per year; by 2022 it had grown to 76 members. One detail about the Society of Arts points forward to a question the academy has always circled: it shares its home in the Trippenhuis with the main academy, making the building, for the first time in the institution’s history, simultaneously the seat of science and of art.