American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning. It serves as a nationwide honor society for the United States. James Bowdoin, John Adams, and John Hancock founded the Academy in Boston during the American Revolution. Their objective, as stated in its charter, was to "cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." Robert Treat Paine and 58 local community leaders to charter the organization in 1780 joined them. Other prominent men soon joined, and early members included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. With over 170 Nobel Laureates on its membership roll, in terms of prestige, a Fellowship or a Foreign Honorary Membership of the Academy is regarded as second only to the Nobel Awards; in recent years, most Nobel Prize recipients were elected to the Fellowship prior to becoming Nobel laureates as perusal of the list of Nobel Laureates and current membership of the Academy would reveal.

The modern academy is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It sponsors conferences, organizes research projects, and publishes a quarterly journal, Daedalus. Today's Academy has 4,000 fellows and about 600 foreign honorary members. Throughout the academic year, members are invited to regularly scheduled talks and meetings in Cambridge and at regional centers headquartered at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Irvine.