Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

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Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
289px
Main building of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.
Motto att främja vetenskaperna och stärka deras inflytande i samhället
(to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society)
Formation 2 June 1739
Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden
Membership
460 Fellows
175 Foreign Members
President
Christina Moberg
Website www.kva.se/en

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organisation which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.

The Academy was founded on 2 June 1739 by naturalist Carl Linnaeus, mercantilist Jonas Alströmer, mechanical engineer Mårten Triewald, civil servants Sten Carl Bielke and Carl Wilhelm Cederhielm, and statesman/author Anders Johan von Höpken.[1]

The purpose of the academy was to focus on practically useful knowledge, and to publish in Swedish in order to widely disseminate the academy's findings. The academy was intended to be different from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, which had been founded in 1719 and published in Latin. The location close to the commercial activities in Sweden's capital (which unlike Uppsala did not have a university at this time) was also intentional. The academy was modeled after the Royal Society of London and Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris, France, which some of the founding members were familiar with.

Committees of the Academy act as selection boards for international prizes:

and national prizes:[7]

List of permanent secretaries

The following persons have served as permanent secretaries of the Academy:

Publications

Kongl. Svenska Vetenskaps-Academiens handlingar, volume XI (1750).

The transactions of the Academy (Vetenskapsakademiens handlingar) were published as its main series between 1739 and 1974. In parallel, other major series have appeared and gone:

  • Öfversigt af Kungl. Vetenskapsakademiens förhandlingar (1844–1903)
  • Bihang till Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar (1872–1902)
  • Vetenskapsakademiens årsbok (1903–1969)

The Academy started to publish annual reports in physics and chemistry (1826), technology (1827), botany (1831), and zoology (1832). These lasted into the 1860s, when they were replaced by the single Bihang series (meaning: supplement to the transactions). Starting in 1887, this series was once again split into four sections (afdelning), which in 1903 became independent scientific journals of their own, titled "Arkiv för..." (archive for...), among them

Further restructuring of their topics occurred in 1949 and 1974.

The Academy's first online-only (born digital) journal is Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence or "ETAI" (ISSN 1403-3534). It was founded in 1997 by Erik Sandewall, professor of computer science at Linköping University.

Current publications
  • Ambio (1972-)
  • Acta Mathematica (1882-)
  • Arkiv för matematik (1949- with this title; 1903-1949 also including physics and astronomy)
  • Acta Zoologica (1920-)
  • Levnadsteckningar över Vetenskapsakademiens ledamöter (1869-), biographies of deceased members
  • Physica Scripta (1970-), jointly with the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
  • Porträttmatrikel (1971-), portraits of current members
  • Zoologica Scripta (1972-), jointly with the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

See also

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

References

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External links