Historical Notes
For more than two centuries, the Academy has sustained the high purpose expressed in its founding charter with an evolving sense of mission and the collaboration of the finest minds in each succeeding generation. The original incorporators were later joined by Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and others. During the 19th century, the elected membership included Daniel Webster, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John J. Audubon, Louis Agassiz, Asa Gray, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Alexander Graham Bell. List of past Academy presidents.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, membership in the Academy continued to grow as other noted scholars, scientists, and statesmen were elected. These included A. A. Michelson, Percival Lowell, Alexander Agassiz, and, later, Charles Steinmetz, Charles Evans Hughes, Samuel Eliot Morison, Albert Einstein, Henry Lee Higginson, Woodrow Wilson, William Howard Taft, and Henry Cabot Lodge. For a current member list, click here.
From the beginning, the Academy has extended honorary membership to prominent scholars, scientists, and statesmen from abroad. Some notable foreign members have been Thomas Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, William Gladstone, John Singleton Copley, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and—in the 20th century—Neils Bohr, Winston Churchill, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Albert Schweitzer. Recent honorary members from abroad include Claude Levi-Strauss, Kazuo Ishigoro, Stephen Hawking, and Abba Eban.
The Seal of the Academy
As described in the original Academy statutes of 1780, the seal's principal figure is Minerva, the Roman goddess of war—a symbol appropriate for an organization created in the midst of the American Revolution. But Minerva, like her Greek counterpart Athena, was also the goddess of wisdom, science and trade, and the arts. Her temple on the Aventine Hill was a meeting place for skilled craftsman, writers, and actors.
Around Minerva are representations of the new country—on her right, a field of Indian corn, a stand of oaks, and the outline of a town; at her feet, a hoe, a plow, and a sickle; on her left a quadrant and a telescope, a ship heading for shore, and the sun completely risen above the cloud. Over the whole is the motto SUB LIBERTATE FLORENT.
According to the statutes the seal "depicts the situation of a new country, depending principally on agriculture but attending at the same time to arms, commerce, and the sciences...The sun represents the rising state of America…and the motto conveys the idea that arts and sciences flourish best in free States."
Stated Meetings
The term "Stated Meetings" dates back to the early years of the Academy. These gatherings were to occur from fall through spring on the second Wednesday evening of the month, as they still do in Cambridge. When the Massachusetts Historical Society was founded eleven years after the Academy, it set its meetings on "the day next following those appointed for the American Academy." This regularity fit the needs of many members who belonged to both organizations. As Walter Whitehill, former longtime librarian of the Boston Athenæum as well as the Academy, put it, "Boston institutions more readily accept change in large matters than in small ones; in ideas rather than in details of daily life. If people do not tinker endlessly with dates and times and meetings, one knows, without recourse to notices or engagement books, when certain things occur, thus avoiding conflicts and minor hassles when more important concerns obtain." For a list of upcoming and recent Stated Meetings, click here.
The House of the Academy
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The first home of the American Academy was the Philosophy Chamber of Harvard College. It was there, in 1779, that John Adams proposed to the Reverend Samuel Cooper his idea for the formation of an Academy. One year later, the Massachusetts legislature enacted the Charter of the Academy. For the next sixty years the new society used the Philosophy Chamber as its meeting place.
During the 19th century the Academy shared quarters with the Boston Athenæum and later the Massachusetts Historical Society. It next moved to 28 Newbury Street in 1904 and remained there until 1955. For a few years the Academy was again peripatetic, borrowing meeting places from neighbors. Then an arrangement was worked out with the Brandegee Charitable Foundation, and the Academy moved to Faulkner Farm in Brookline. The Academy remained there until the completion of a brand new house, the Academy's first permanent home, designed for the Academy at 136 Irving Street in Cambridge in 1981.
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The completion of the new building brought form to a two-hundred-year history of intellectual endeavor. Made possible through the vision and generosity of Edwin Land, the House of the Academy was created to provide an intimate home for scholarly thought. Its award-winning design, by the architectural firm Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, incorporates many metaphors, borrowing elements from ancient Greek cities, Renaissance Tuscan villas, and the 20th-century American and British Arts and Crafts style. The House now stands as a "House of the Mind," the American Academy’s national headquarters, and a center for scholarly exchange.
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Breaking ground on the new House of the Academy in Cambridge, Massachusetts
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