American Philosophical Society. Benjamin
Franklin organized the American Philosophical Society (APS) in 1743, but failure to attract wider support led to its collapse in 1745. Throughout the 1750s and 1760s, a small group of Philadelphians met intermittently to discuss science, and in 1766 they organized themselves into the American Society for Promoting and Propagating Useful Knowledge. Led by Charles Thomson, the membership consisted principally of liberal members of the
Society of Friends (Quakers) who supported the Assembly party in Pennsylvania politics. In 1767 a rival group, mostly Anglicans and Presbyterians, aligned with Pennsylvania's Proprietary party, organized an American Philosophical Society. Franklin, elected President of the latter body in 1768, oversaw the merger of the two groups and on 2 January 1769 presided over the first meeting of the American Philosophical Society, held at
Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Later that year the APS, with the financial support of the Provincial Assembly, made eleven sets of observations of the Transit of Venus. These were published in 1771 in the society's
Transactions, winning international recognition for American science. From the society's inception, it usually recruited its officers from the University of Pennsylvania faculty and its active members from the city of Philadelphia; yet until the 1840s, the APS served as a national scientific society, acting as a resource for the federal government and disseminating the research of American scientists through its
Transactions.With the emergence of specialized scientific societies and the creation of official national organizations for American science, the APS lost its national role and transformed itself into a general learned society. In 1917 the society helped organize the American Council of Learned Societies. Since the 1950s the APS has been a major archival repository of collections in early American history and the history of science; it awards approximately $600,000 each year in research grants.
See also
Science: Colonial Era;
Science: Revolutionary War to World War I.
Bibliography
Brooke Hindle , The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735–1789, 1956.
Edward C. Carter II , “One Grand Pursuit”: A Brief History of the American Philosophical Society's First 250 Years, 1743–1993, 1993.
Simon Baatz
