As the meetings continued and the members increased the society attracted the notice of the king; and on the 31st of March 1741 it was incorporated as the Royal Swedish Academy. Though under royal patronage and largely endowed, it is, like the Royal Society in England, entirely self-governed. Each of the members resident at Stockholm becomes in turn president, and continues in office for three months. The dissertations read at each meeting are published in the Swedish language, quarterly, and make an annual volume. The first forty volumes, octavo, completed in 1779, are called the Old Transactions.
United States of America.—The oldest scientific association in the United States is the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge. It owed its origin to Benjamin Franklin, who in 1743 published “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge among the British Plantations in America,” which was so favourably received that in the same year the society was organized, with Thomas Hopkinson (1709–1751) as president and Franklin as secretary. In 1769 it united with another scientific society founded by Franklin, called the American Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, and adopted its present name, adding the descriptive phrase from the title of the American Society, and elected Franklin president, an office which he held until his death (1790). The American Philosophical Society is national in scope and is exclusively scientific; its Transactions date from 1771, and its Proceedings from 1838. It has a hall in Philadelphia, with meeting-rooms and a valuable library and collection of interesting portraits and relics. David Rittenhouse was its second and Thomas Jefferson was its third president. In 1786 John Hyacinth de Magellan, of London, presented a fund, the income of which was to supply a gold medal for the author of the most important discovery “relating to navigation, astronomy or natural philosophy (mere natural history excepted).” An annual general meeting is held.
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston), the second oldest scientific organization in the United States, was chartered in Massachusetts in 1780 by some of the most prominent men of that time. James Bowdoin was its first president, John Adams its second. The Academy published Memoirs beginning in 1785, and Proceedings from 1846. The Rumford Premium awarded through it for the most “important discovery or useful improvement on Heat, or on Light” is the income of $5000 given to the Academy by Count Rumford.
The National Academy of Sciences (1863) was incorporated by Congress with the object that it “shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment and report upon any subject of science or art.” Its membership was first limited to 50; after the amendment of the act of incorporation in 1870 the limit was placed at 100; and in 1907 it was prescribed that the resident membership should not exceed 150 in number, that not more than 10 members be elected in any one year, and that the number of foreign associates be restricted to 50. The Academy is divided into six committees: mathematics and astronomy; physics and engineering; chemistry; geology and palaeontology; biology; and anthropology. It gives several gold medals for meritorious researches and discoveries. It publishes scientific monographs (at the expense of the Federal Government). Its presidents have been Alexander D. Bache, Joseph Henry, Wm. B. Rogers, Othniel C. Marsh, Wolcott Gibbs, Alexander Agassiz and Ira Remsen.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia was organized in 1812. It has a large library, very rich in natural history, and its museum, with nearly half a million specimens, is particularly strong in conchology and ornithology. The society has published Journals since 1817, and Proceedings since 1841; it also has published the American Journal of Conchology. The American Entomological Society (in 1859–1867 the Entomological Society of Philadelphia, and since 1876 part of this academy) has published Proceedings since 1861, and the Entomological News (a monthly).
There are also other scientific organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (chartered in 1874, as a continuation of the American Association of Geologists, founded in 1840 and becoming in 1842 the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists), which publishes its Proceedings annually; the American Geographical Society (1852), with headquarters in New York; the National Geographic Society (1888), with headquarters in Washington, D.C.; the Geological Society of America (1888), the American Ornithologists' Union (1883), the American Society of Naturalists (1883), the Botanical Society of America (1893), the American Academy of Medicine (1876); and local academies of science, or of special sciences, in many of the larger cities. The Smithsonian Institution at Washington is treated in a separate article.
II. Academies of Belles Lettres
Belgium.—Belgium has always been famous for its literary societies. The little town of Diest boasts that it possessed a society of poets in 1302, and the Catherinists of Alost date from 1107. It is at least certain that numerous Chambers of Rhetoric (so academies were then called) existed in the first years of the rule of the house of Burgundy.
France.—The French Academy (l’Academie française) was established by order of the king in the year 1635, but in its original form existed four or five years earlier. About the year 1629 certain literary friends in Paris agreed to meet informally each week at the house of Valentin Courart, the king’s secretary. The conversation turned mostly on literary topics; and when one of the number had finished some literary work, he read it to the rest, and they gave their opinions upon it. The fame of these meetings, though the members were bound to secrecy, reached the ears of Cardinal Richelieu, who promised his protection and offered to incorporate the society by letters patent. Nearly all the members would have preferred the charms of privacy, but, considering the risk they would run in incurring the cardinal’s displeasure, and that by the letter of the law all meetings of any sort were prohibited, they expressed their gratitude for the high honour the cardinal thought fit to confer on them, proceeded at once to organize their body, settle their laws and constitution, appoint officers and choose a name. Letters patent were granted by the king on the 29th of January 1635. The officers consisted of a director and a chancellor, chosen by lot, and a permanent secretary, chosen by vote. They elected also a publisher, not a member of the body. The director presided at the meetings, being considered as primus inter pares. The chancellor kept the seals and sealed all the official documents of the academy. The cardinal was ex officio protector. The meetings were held weekly as before.
The object for which the academy was founded, as set forth in its statutes, was the purification of the French language. “The principal function of the academy shall be to labour with all care and diligence to give certain rules to our language, and to render it pure, eloquent and capable of treating the arts and sciences” (Art. 24). They proposed “to cleanse the language from the impurities it has contracted in the mouths of the common people, from the jargon of the lawyers, from the misusages of ignorant courtiers, and the abuses of the pulpit” (Letter of Academy to Cardinal Richelieu).
The number of members was fixed at forty. The original members formed a nucleus of eight, and it was not till 1639 that the full number was completed. Their first undertaking consisted of essays written by the members in rotation. To judge by the titles and specimens which have come down to us, these possessed no special originality or merit, but resembled the ἐπιδείξεις of the Greek rhetoricians. Next, at the instance of Cardinal Richelieu, they undertook a criticism of Corneille’s Cid, the most popular work of the day. It was a rule of the academy that no work could be criticized except at the author’s request, and fear of incurring the cardinal’s displeasure wrung from Corneille an unwilling consent. The critique of the academy was re-written several times before it met with the cardinal’s approbation. After six months of elaboration, it was published
