History
Founded in 1817, the New York Academy of Sciences (originally called the Lyceum of Natural History) has evolved from a notable institution in the greater New York area to one of the most significant organizations in the international scientific community. Since its beginnings, Academy membership has included prominent leaders in the sciences, business, academia and government, including Presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Margaret Mead, and Albert Einstein. In 2007, members included an unprecedented number of Nobel Laureates (23) on its advisory President’s Council alone) and other luminaries from all walks of life.
Academy accomplishments include many historic “firsts,” such as publication of the first studies on environmental pollution (1876); the first conference on antibiotics (1946); a groundbreaking gathering on the cardiovascular effects of smoking (1960); and the world’s first major conferences on AIDS (1983) and SARS (2003). The Academy also held landmark conferences on the special challenges facing women in science (1998); music and neuroscience (2000); and a conference in China on the Frontiers of Biomedical Science (2005). NYAS members also played prominent roles in the establishment of New York University (1831) and the American Museum of Natural History (1858).
In 2006, the Academy moved into a new home on the 40th floor of 7 World Trade Center, one of the world’s most technologically advanced “green” buildings in New York. With state-of-the-art meeting facilities, the 40,000-square-foot (3,700 m2) space better meets the needs of the Academy’s growing membership and expanding programs.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Social history might be defined negatively as the history of a people with the politics left out.”
—G.M. (George Macaulay)
“The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)