National Academy of Sciences

As of 2022, the National Academy of Sciences includes 2,493 NAS members and 491 international members.[4] It employed about 1,100 staff in 2005.[5][6] Some 190 members have won a Nobel Prize.[4] By its own admission in 1989, the addition of women to the Academy "continues at a dismal trickle", at which time there were 1,516 male members and 57 female members.[7]

The National Academy of Sciences is one of the 135 member organizations of the International Science Council (ISC). Although there is no formal relationship with state and local academies of science, there often is informal dialogue. The National Academy is governed by a 17-member Council, made up of five officers (president, vice president, home secretary, international secretary, and treasurer) and 12 Councilors, all of whom are elected from among the Academy membership.[8] Agencies of the United States government fund about 85 percent of the Academy's activities. Further funding comes from state governments, private foundations, and industrial organizations.[9]

The Council has the ability ad-hoc to delegate certain tasks to committees. For example, the Committee on Animal Nutrition has produced a series of Nutrient requirements of domestic animals reports since at least 1944, each one being initiated by a different sub-committee of experts in the field for example on dairy cattle.

The National Academy of Sciences meets annually in Washington, D.C., which is documented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, its scholarly journal. The National Academies Press is the publisher for the National Academies, and makes more than 5,000 publications freely available on its website.[10]

From 2004 to 2017, the National Academy of Sciences administered the Marian Koshland Science Museum to provide public exhibits and programming related to its policy work. The museum's exhibits focused on climate change and infectious disease. In 2017, the museum closed and made way for a new science outreach program called LabX.

The Academy currently has 2,984 members and international members. Existing members elect new members for life. Up to 120 members are elected every year; up to 30 foreign citizens may be elected as international members annually. The election process begins with a formal nomination, followed by a vetting period, and culminates in a final ballot at the Academy's annual meeting in April each year. Members are affiliated with a section – a specific scientific field – in one of six so-called "classes": (1) Physical and Mathematical Sciences; (2) Biological Sciences; (3) Engineering and Applied Sciences; (4) Biomedical Sciences; (5) Behavioral and Social Sciences; and (6) Applied Biological, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.[6] Since its founding, the Academy has elected 6,607 members. Harvard University is associated with the most members (330), some 5% of the all-time total. The top ten institutions, half of which are in the Ivy League, account for nearly 28% of all members ever elected.[11]

The National Academies' Beckman Conference Center, Irvine, California

Albert Einstein Memorial outside of the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.

The National Academy of Sciences maintains multiple buildings around the United States.

The National Academy of Sciences Building is located at 2101 Constitution Avenue, in northwest Washington, D.C.; it sits on the National Mall, adjacent to the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building and in front of the headquarters of the U.S. State Department. The building has a neoclassical architectural style and was built by architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue. The building was dedicated in 1924[12] and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Goodhue engaged a team of artists and architectural sculptors including Albert Herter, Lee Lawrie, and Hildreth Meière to design interior embellishments celebrating the history and significance of science.[13] The building is used for lectures, symposia, exhibitions, and concerts, in addition to annual meetings of the NAS, NAE, and NAM. The 2012 Presidential Award for Math and Science Teaching ceremony was held here on March 5, 2014. Approximately 150 staff members work at the NAS Building. In June 2012, it reopened to visitors after a major two-year restoration project which restored and improved the building's historic spaces, increased accessibility, and brought the building's aging infrastructure and facilities up to date.[14]

More than 1,000 National Academies staff members work at The Keck Center of the National Academies at 500 Fifth Street in northwest Washington, D.C. The Keck Center provides meeting space and houses the National Academies Press Bookstore.[15] The Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences – formerly located at 525 E St., N.W. – hosted visits from the public, school field trips, traveling exhibits such as Mathemalchemy,[16] and permanent science exhibits.[17]

The NAS also maintains conference centers in California and Massachusetts.[15] The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center is located on 100 Academy Drive in Irvine, California, near the campus of the University of California, Irvine; it offers a conference center and houses several NAS programs. The J. Erik Jonsson Conference Center located at 314 Quissett Avenue in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is another conference facility.

The Act of Incorporation, signed by President Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, created the National Academy of Sciences and named 50 charter members. Many of the original NAS members came from the so-called "Scientific Lazzaroni," an informal network of mostly physical scientists working in the vicinity of Cambridge, Massachusetts (c. 1850).[18]

The Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, D.C., one of several facilities where the National Academy of Sciences maintains offices

In 1863, the organizers enlisted the support of Alexander Dallas Bache, and also Charles Henry Davis, a professional astronomer who had been recently recalled from the Navy to Washington to head the Bureau of Navigation. They also elicited support from Swiss-American geologist Louis Agassiz and American mathematician Peirce, who together planned the steps whereby the National Academy of Sciences was to be established. Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts was to name Agassiz to the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.[19]

Agassiz was to come to Washington at the government's expense to plan the organization with the others. This bypassed Joseph Henry, who was reluctant to have a bill for such an academy presented to Congress. This was in the belief that such a resolution would be "opposed as something at variance with our democratic institutions". Nevertheless, Henry soon became the second President of NAS. Agassiz, Davis, Peirce, Benjamin Gould, and Senator Wilson met at Bache's house and "hurriedly wrote the bill incorporating the Academy, including in it the name of fifty incorporators".[20]

During the last hours of the session, when the Senate was immersed in the rush of last minute business before its adjournment, Senator Wilson introduced the bill. Without examining it or debating its provisions, both the Senate and House approved it, and President Lincoln signed it.[20]

Although hailed as a great step forward in government recognition of the role of science in American society, at the time, the National Academy of Sciences created enormous ill-feelings among scientists,[20] whether or not they were named as incorporators.

The act states:

[T]he Academy shall, whenever called upon by any department of the Government, investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art, the actual expense of such investigations, examinations, experiments, and reports to be paid from appropriations which may be made for the purpose, but the Academy shall receive no compensation whatever for any services to the Government of the United States.[21]

The National Academies did not solve the problems facing a nation in Civil War as the Lazzaroni had hoped, nor did it centralize American scientific efforts.[20] However, election to the National Academy did come to be considered "the pinnacle of scientific achievement for Americans" until the establishment of the Nobel Prize at the end of the 19th century.[22]^: 30

In 1870, the congressional charter was amended to remove the limitation on the number of members.[23]

In 2013, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to write a speech for the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address in which he made the point that one of Lincoln's greatest legacies was establishing the National Academy of Sciences in that same year, which had the long-term effect of "setting our Nation on a course of scientifically enlightened governance, without which we all may perish from this Earth".[24]

The president is the head of the Academy, elected by a majority vote of the membership to serve in this position for a term to be determined by the governing Council, not to exceed six years, and may be re-elected for a second term. The Academy has had 22 presidents since its foundation. The current president is geophysicist Marcia K. McNutt, the first woman to hold this position. Her term expires on June 30, 2022.[25]

The Academy gives a number of different awards:

• General
  • Membership of the National Academy of Sciences (including international members)[26]
  • John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science
  • William O. Baker Award for Initiatives in Research, formerly NAS Award for Initiatives in Research
  • NAS Award for Scientific Reviewing
  • NAS Award for Scientific Discovery
  • Public Welfare Medal
  • Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research
• Astronomy/Astrophysics
  • Henry Draper Medal
  • J. Lawrence Smith Medal
  • James Craig Watson Medal
• Behavioral/Social Sciences
  • Atkinson Prize in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • William and Katherine Estes Award, formerly the NAS Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War
  • Troland Research Awards
• Biology and Medicine
  • Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics
  • Jessie Stevenson Kovalenko Medal
  • Richard Lounsbery Award
  • Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal
  • NAS Award in Molecular Biology
  • NAS Award in the Neurosciences
  • Pradel Research Award
  • Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology
• Chemistry
  • NAS Award in Chemical Sciences
  • NAS Award for Chemistry in Service to Society
• Earth and Environmental Sciences
  • Alexander Agassiz Medal
  • Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship
  • Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal
  • Mary Clark Thompson Medal
  • NAS Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences
  • Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal, part of the NAS Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences since 2008
  • Stanley Miller Medal, part of the NAS Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences since 2008
  • G. K. Warren Prize
• Engineering and Applied Sciences
  • J.C. Hunsaker Award – aeronautical engineering
  • Gibbs Brothers Medal – naval architecture, marine engineering
  • NAS Award for the Industrial Application of Science
  • NAS Prize in Food and Agriculture Science
• Mathematics and Computer Science
  • NAS Award in Mathematics
• Physics
  • Arctowski Medal
  • Comstock Prize in Physics
  • Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics

In 2005, the national science academies of the G8 forum (including the National Academy of Sciences) and science academies of Brazil, China, and India (three of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the developing world) signed a statement on the global response to climate change. The statement stresses that the scientific understanding of climate change had become sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.[27]

On May 7, 2010, a letter signed by 255 Academy members was published in Science magazine, decrying "political assaults" against climate change scientists.[28][29] This was in response to a civil investigative demand on the University of Virginia (UVA) by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, seeking a broad range of documents from Michael E. Mann, a former UVA professor from 1999–2005.[30][31] Mann, who currently works at Penn State, is a climate change researcher, and Cuccinelli alleges that Mann may have defrauded Virginia taxpayers in the course of his environmental research. Investigations had cleared Mann of charges that he falsified or suppressed data.[32]

• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• National Digital Library Program (NDLP)
• List of members of the National Academy of Sciences
• National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• National Academy of Sciences' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoirs
• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
• Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey

• 1873, Edward C. Pickering (1846–1919) was the youngest scientist elected[33]
• 1924, Florence R. Sabin (1871–1953) was the first lifetime woman member to be elected[33]
• 1965, David Blackwell (1919–2010) was the first African-American elected[33]
• 2013, Ben Barres (1954–2017) was the first openly transgender scientist elected[34]

• Nader, Ralph (1975). Introduction. The brain bank of America: An inquiry into the politics of science. By Boffey, Philip. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-0070063686.
• Hilgartner, Stephen (2000). Science on Stage: Expert Advice as Public Drama. Writing science. Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780804736466. 634.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to United States National Academy of Sciences.

• Official website
  • Office of Cultural Programs
  • LabX
  • The Science & Entertainment Exchange
• Library of Congress:
  • LC 21: A Digital Strategy for the LOC
  • Digital Collections and Programs
  • Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
• Vega Science Trust:
  • Video programmes
  • Sherwood Rowland, NL, discusses Climate Change (Video). 2006. 119.