National Academy of Sciences. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was the brainchild of three nineteenth‐century figures prominent in the American scientific community: Joseph
Henry; Alexander Dallas Bache, superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey; and Charles Henry Davis, a naval officer and scientist.These men hoped to create a body analogous to Great Britain's Royal Society and the French Academy. In 1863 they obtained a government charter for this organization, which they hoped would centralize control over American science, recognize the achievements of the scientific community, and serve as an agency for advising the federal government on scientific matters. Passage of legislation creating the academy in March 1863 depended on skillful use of legislative procedure by Republican Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts.
During the NAS's first half‐century, the federal government rarely sought its advice. Its impact on federal policy, however, increased markedly when it established the National Research Council (NRC)—a collaboration of academic and industrial scientific elites—at the onset of
World War I. On behalf of the government, the NRC helped achieve large‐scale production of optical glass, nitrates, and poison gas, among other materials. The NAS did not play a prominent role in organizing science during
World War II. During the
Cold War, however, it received many contracts to provide advice to the government, and thereafter it continued to produce reports on a wide range of subjects.
Election to the NAS is considered a high honor among American scientists. Like the American scientific community generally, the NAS has been dominated by white males throughout its history. The first woman was elected to academy membership in 1925. At the close of the twentieth century, the academy comprised about 1,800 members and 300 foreign associates.
See also
Coast and Geodetic Survey, U.S.;
Science: Revolutionary War to World War I;
Science: From 1914 to 1945;
Science: Since 1945.
Bibliography
A. Hunter Dupree , Science in the Federal Government: A History of Policies and Activities, 1957, reprint 1986.
Daniel J. Kevles , The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America, 1987.
Daniel Lee Kleinman
