The National Academy of Sciences of Argentina was created in 1869 by President D. F. Sarmiento in the City of Cordoba, Argentina, as a scientific corporation supported by the Federal Government. It was the first Academy to be supported by the Federal Government. It was finally consolidated legally in 1878 by presidential decree. Since its inception, the Academy has advocated for the development and outreach of exact and natural sciences, the exploration of the Argentine territory and has served as advisor to the National Government, provincial governments and other scientific institutions. The academy also awards prizes, publishes a journal and keeps a library and organizes conferences and other events. The building of the Academy was inaugurated in 1897 and was declared a National Historical Monument in 1994.
Many important scietists are or have been members of the Academy including Charles Darwin, Benjamin Gould, Henri Milne-Edwards and more recently Argentine Nobel laureates Bernardo Houssay and Luis Leloir.
Famous quotes containing the words national, academy and/or sciences:
“Ignorance, forgetfulness, or contempt of the rights of man are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption of governments.”
—French National Assembly. Declaration of the Rights of Man (drafted and discussed Aug. 1789, published Sept. 1791)
“...I have come to make distinctions between what I call the academy and literature, the moral equivalents of church and God. The academy may lie, but literature tries to tell the truth.”
—Dorothy Allison (b. 1949)
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)