Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 65.djvu/82

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
78
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

asked to turn over to the government the 'Calendar' monopoly it had so long enjoyed. This it was not inclined to do until the order of the king rendered it imperative.

In 1811 William von Humboldt was sent as ambassador to Vienna, but his views and plans for the academy were left with his friend Nocolovinus, who secured their adoption and their incorporation into the constitution and by-laws of 1812. This was the last year in which the reports of the academy appear in French. The income actually obtained was a little less than $7,000, but the expenses of the institutions which it had previously met were now met from other funds. The new statute was confirmed by the king on January 24, 1812, and the next year the last volume of the 'Memoires,' bearing the date of 1801, was published. In offering prizes Latin and French were still used, but henceforward the language of the academy, for its publications as well as its discussions, was German.

In its management there was now neither president, curator, nor director. The management of its work was in the hands of four secretaries. There were the usual classes of members, active, foreign or honorary, and corresponding. It was decided that only twenty-four foreign members should be chosen, eight for each of the scientific classes and four for each of the other two classes. There was no limit to the number of corresponding members. Regular sessions were henceforth held every Thursday afternoon, and every fourth Monday each class had an extra meeting in order to render its special work more effective. There were to be three public meetings each year, one of them in July in honor of Leibniz, another on the king's birthday, the third on January 24, or Frederick's day. Each member was required to read at least one paper every year until he had been in the academy twenty-five years; after that time, at his own pleasure. The subjects were to be assigned by the class to which the member who was to write belonged. Each class was permitted to choose its own members, subject to the approval of the entire academy and of the king. Each volume of the proceedings or transactions, was to be divided into four parts, so that reports of the work of each class might appear together.

In 1811-12 twenty-four foreign members were chosen, among them William von Humboldt, now residing in Vienna, Jacobi, the philosopher, and Professor Dugald Stewart of Edinburgh. There were twenty-one honorary members and ninety corresponding members, forty-eight of them in the scientific classes. More than half the entire number was German. Up to this time the academy had given more attention to reports of what had been done by others than to original research and the diffusion of knowledge. In scientific work it was at least a generation behind the academies of England, France and Sweden. All this was now changed. Under the new order each secretary became in a