The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other Founding Fathers of the United States. It is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Membership in the academy is achieved through a petition, review, and election process. The academy's quarterly journal, Dædalus, is published by the MIT Press on behalf of the academy, and has been open-access since January 2021. The academy also conducts multidisciplinary public policy research.

Laurie L. Patton will become President of the Academy in January 2025.

The Academy was established by the Massachusetts legislature on May 4, 1780, charted in order "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." The sixty-two incorporating fellows represented varying interests and high standing in the political, professional, and commercial sectors of the state. The first class of new members, chosen by the Academy in 1781, included Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as well as several international honorary members. The initial volume of Academy Memoirs appeared in 1785, and the Proceedings followed in 1846. In the 1950s, the Academy launched its journal Daedalus, reflecting its commitment to a broader intellectual and socially-oriented program.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, independent research has become a central focus of the Academy. In the late 1950s, arms control emerged as one of its signature concerns. The Academy also served as the catalyst in establishing the National Humanities Center in North Carolina. In the late 1990s, the Academy developed a new strategic plan, focusing on four major areas: science, technology, and global security; social policy and education; humanities and culture; and education. In 2002, the Academy established a visiting scholars program in association with Harvard University. More than 75 academic institutions from across the country have become Affiliates of the Academy to support this program and other Academy initiatives.

The Academy has sponsored a number of awards and prizes, throughout its history and has offered opportunities for fellowships and visiting scholars at the Academy.

In July 2013, the Boston Globe exposed then president Leslie Berlowitz for falsifying her credentials, faking a doctorate, and consistently mistreating her staff. Berlowitz subsequently resigned.

A project of the Academy that equips researchers, policymakers, universities, foundations, museums, libraries, humanities councils, and other public institutions with statistical tools for answering basic questions about primary and secondary humanities education, undergraduate and graduate education in the humanities, the humanities workforce, levels and sources of program funding, public understanding and impact of the humanities, and other areas of concern in the humanities community. It is modeled on the Science and Engineering Indicators, published biennially by the National Science Board as required by Congress.

Charter members of the Academy were John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Bacon, James Bowdoin, Charles Chauncy, John Clarke, David Cobb, Samuel Cooper, Nathan Cushing, Thomas Cushing, William Cushing, Tristram Dalton, Francis Dana, Samuel Deane, Perez Fobes, Caleb Gannett, Henry Gardner, Benjamin Guild, John Hancock, Joseph Hawley, Edward Augustus Holyoke, Ebenezer Hunt, Jonathan Jackson, Charles Jarvis, Samuel Langdon, Levi Lincoln, Daniel Little, Elijah Lothrup, John Lowell, Samuel Mather, Samuel Moody, Andrew Oliver, Joseph Orne, Theodore Parsons, George Partridge, Robert Treat Paine, Phillips Payson, Samuel Phillips, John Pickering, Oliver Prescott, Zedekiah Sanger, Nathaniel Peaslee Sargeant, Micajah Sawyer, Theodore Sedgwick, William Sever, David Sewall, Stephen Sewall, John Sprague, Ebenezer Storer, Caleb Strong, James Sullivan, John Bernard Sweat, Nathaniel Tracy, Cotton Tufts, James Warren, Samuel West, Edward Wigglesworth, Joseph Willard, Abraham Williams, Nehemiah Williams, Samuel Williams, and James Winthrop.

From the beginning, the membership, nominated and elected by peers, has included not only scientists and scholars, but also writers and artists as well as representatives from the full range of professions and public life. Throughout the Academy's history, 10,000 fellows have been elected, including such notables as John Adams, John James Audubon, Sissela Bok, Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Joseph Henry, Washington Irving, Thomas Jefferson, Edward R. Murrow, Martha Nussbaum, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Jonas Salk and Eudora Welty.

International honorary members have included Jose Antonio Pantoja Hernandez, Albert Einstein, Leonhard Euler, Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Charles Darwin, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Otto Hahn, Jawaharlal Nehru, Pablo Picasso, Liu Guosong, Lucian Michael Freud, Luis Buñuel, Galina Ulanova, Werner Heisenberg, Alec Guinness, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Menahem Yaari, Yitzhak Apeloig, Zvi Galil, Haim Harari, and Sebastião Salgado.

Astronomer Maria Mitchell was the first woman elected to the Academy, in 1848.

The current membership encompasses over 5,700 members based across the United States and around the world. Academy members include more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners.

Of the Academy's 14,343 members since 1780, 1,406 are or have been affiliated with Harvard University, 611 with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 433 with Yale University, 425 with the University of California, Berkeley, and 404 with Stanford University. The following table includes those institutions affiliated with 300 or more members.

Institution	Members (1780–2021)
Harvard	1,406
MIT	611
Yale	433
Berkeley	425
Stanford	404
Chicago	367
Columbia	344
Princeton	322

† Excludes members affiliated exclusively with associated national laboratories.

As of 2023, membership is divided into five classes and thirty specialties.

Class I – Mathematical and physical sciences

• Section 1. Mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics
• Section 2. Physics
• Section 3. Chemistry
• Section 4. Astronomy, astrophysics, and earth sciences
• Section 5. Engineering and technologies
• Section 6. Computer sciences

Class II – Biological sciences

• Section 1. Biochemistry, biophysics, and molecular biology
• Section 2. Cellular and developmental biology
• Section 3. Neurosciences
• Section 4. Evolution and ecology
• Section 5. Medical sciences

Class III – Social and behavioral sciences

• Section 1. Psychological sciences
• Section 2. Economics
• Section 3. Political science
• Section 4. Law
• Section 5. Archaeology and anthropology
• Section 6. Sociology, demography, and geography
• Section 7. Education

Class IV – Arts and humanities

• Section 1. Philosophy
• Section 2. History
• Section 3. Literature and language studies
• Section 4. Literature
• Section 5. Visual arts
• Section 6. Performing arts
• Section 7. Religious studies

Class V – Public affairs, business, and administration

• Section 1. Journalism, media, and communications
• Section 2. Business, corporate, and philanthropic leadership
• Section 3. Educational and academic leadership
• Section 4. Public affairs and public policy
• Section 5. Scientific, cultural, and nonprofit leadership

• American Philosophical Society
• National Academy of Engineering
• National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine)
• National Academy of Sciences
• List of American Academy of Arts and Sciences members

• Official website
• Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol 1, 1783
• Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Vol.1 (1846) – Vol.57 (1922) at Biodiversity Heritage Library

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