German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina
Encyclopedia
The Leopoldina is the national academy
of Germany
.
Historically it was known under the German
name Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina until 2007, when it was declared the national academy of Germany.
The Leopoldina is currently located in Halle
. Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina claims to be , p. 5 the oldest continuously existing learned society
in the world.
The Leopoldina was founded in the city of Schweinfurt
on 1 January 1652 under the Latin name Academia Naturae Curiosorum, sometimes translated into English as "Academy of the Curious as to Nature." The four founding members were physicians, namely Johann Laurentius Bausch, first president of the society, Johann Michael Fehr, Georg Balthasar Metzger
, and Georg Balthasar Wohlfarth.
In 1670 the society began to publish the Ephemeriden, the world's first medical
and scientific
journal
.
In 1677, Leopold I
, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
, recognised the society and in 1687 he gave it the epithet Leopoldina., p. 7–8;
At first, the society conducted its business by correspondence and was located wherever the president was working. It was not permanently located in Halle until 1878 and did not meet regularly
until 1924., pp. 8–9
When Adolf Hitler
became Germany's chancellor in 1933, the Leopoldina started to exclude its Jewish members. Albert Einstein
was one the first victims, more than 70 followed until 1938. Eight of them were murdered by the Nazis.
At the end of World War II
, the city of Halle, and hence the building of the academy, became part of East Germany and the communist government tried repeatedly to nationalise it. However, the Leopoldina successfully resisted these attempts and continued to think of itself as an institution for the whole of Germany. In 1991, after German reunification
, the Leopoldina was granted the status of a non-profit organisation. It is presently funded jointly by the German government and the government of the state of Saxony-Anhalt
., pp. 10–14
In November 2007, German science minister Annette Schavan
announced the re-naming of the Leopoldina to "German Academy of Sciences" (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften), and said that "due to its international prestige, the Leopoldina is predestined to represent Germany within the circle of international academies." As the German Academy of Sciences, it is a counterpart to the rights and responsibilities of institutions such as Britain's Royal Society
and the United States' National Academy of Science.
.
The Leopoldina gives conferences and lectures and continues to publish the Ephemeriden under the name Nova Acta Leopoldina. It issues various medals and awards, offers grants and scholarships and elects new members to itself. The Academy also maintains a library and an archive and it also researches its own history and publishes another journal, Acta Historica Leopoldina devoted to this subject., pp. 15–33
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Three quarters of the members are from German-speaking countries (Germany, Austria
, Switzerland
) and one quarter from about 30 other nations. The election to membership of the Leopoldina is the highest academic honour awarded by an institution in Germany.
As of 2007, a total of 157 Nobel prize
laureates are fellows of the Leopoldina.
Among the most noted of fellows are for instance:
This is a list of the presidents of the Leopoldina with the times and places of office:
National academy
A national academy is an organizational body, usually operating with state financial support and approval, that co-ordinates scholarly research activities and standards for academic disciplines, most frequently in the sciences but also the humanities. Typically the country's learned societies in...
of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Historically it was known under the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
name Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina until 2007, when it was declared the national academy of Germany.
The Leopoldina is currently located in Halle
Halle, Saxony-Anhalt
Halle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
. Founded in 1652, the Leopoldina claims to be , p. 5 the oldest continuously existing learned society
Learned society
A learned society is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline/profession, as well a group of disciplines. Membership may be open to all, may require possession of some qualification, or may be an honor conferred by election, as is the case with the oldest learned societies,...
in the world.
History
Schweinfurt
Schweinfurt is a city in the Lower Franconia region of Bavaria in Germany on the right bank of the canalized Main, which is here spanned by several bridges, 27 km northeast of Würzburg.- History :...
on 1 January 1652 under the Latin name Academia Naturae Curiosorum, sometimes translated into English as "Academy of the Curious as to Nature." The four founding members were physicians, namely Johann Laurentius Bausch, first president of the society, Johann Michael Fehr, Georg Balthasar Metzger
Georg Balthasar Metzger
Georg Balthasar Metzger was a German physician and scientist notable as one of the four founding members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Schweinfurt....
, and Georg Balthasar Wohlfarth.
In 1670 the society began to publish the Ephemeriden, the world's first medical
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and scientific
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...
journal
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
.
In 1677, Leopold I
Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor
| style="float:right;" | Leopold I was a Holy Roman Emperor, King of Hungary and King of Bohemia. A member of the Habsburg family, he was the second son of Emperor Ferdinand III and his first wife, Maria Anna of Spain. His maternal grandparents were Philip III of Spain and Margaret of Austria...
, emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...
, recognised the society and in 1687 he gave it the epithet Leopoldina., p. 7–8;
At first, the society conducted its business by correspondence and was located wherever the president was working. It was not permanently located in Halle until 1878 and did not meet regularly
until 1924., pp. 8–9
When Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
became Germany's chancellor in 1933, the Leopoldina started to exclude its Jewish members. Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
was one the first victims, more than 70 followed until 1938. Eight of them were murdered by the Nazis.
At the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the city of Halle, and hence the building of the academy, became part of East Germany and the communist government tried repeatedly to nationalise it. However, the Leopoldina successfully resisted these attempts and continued to think of itself as an institution for the whole of Germany. In 1991, after German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
, the Leopoldina was granted the status of a non-profit organisation. It is presently funded jointly by the German government and the government of the state of Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt
Saxony-Anhalt is a landlocked state of Germany. Its capital is Magdeburg and it is surrounded by the German states of Lower Saxony, Brandenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia.Saxony-Anhalt covers an area of...
., pp. 10–14
In November 2007, German science minister Annette Schavan
Annette Schavan
' is a German politician . She has been the Federal Minister of Education and Research since November 22, 2005.From 1995-2005, she served as the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports of the German state of Baden-Württemberg...
announced the re-naming of the Leopoldina to "German Academy of Sciences" (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften), and said that "due to its international prestige, the Leopoldina is predestined to represent Germany within the circle of international academies." As the German Academy of Sciences, it is a counterpart to the rights and responsibilities of institutions such as Britain's Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
and the United States' National Academy of Science.
Activities
The Leopoldina is the first and foremost academic society in Germany to advise the German government on a variety of scientific matters, for instance on climate changeClimate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...
.
The Leopoldina gives conferences and lectures and continues to publish the Ephemeriden under the name Nova Acta Leopoldina. It issues various medals and awards, offers grants and scholarships and elects new members to itself. The Academy also maintains a library and an archive and it also researches its own history and publishes another journal, Acta Historica Leopoldina devoted to this subject., pp. 15–33
Honours
Apart from being a fellow, excellence can also be rewarded by receiving one of the following honours:- honorary membership
- Cothenius Medal (first awarded in 1792)
- Carus Medal (first awarded in 1896)
- Schleiden Medal (first awarded in 1955)
- Mendel Medal (since 1965, in honour of Gregor MendelGregor MendelGregor Johann Mendel was an Austrian scientist and Augustinian friar who gained posthumous fame as the founder of the new science of genetics. Mendel demonstrated that the inheritance of certain traits in pea plants follows particular patterns, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance...
) - Darwin Badge (only awarded in 1959 - the 100th anniversary of the publication of The origin of speciesThe Origin of SpeciesCharles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
) - Leopoldina Prize for Junior Scientists
- Georg Uschmann Prize for History of Science
- Leopoldina Research Prize (since 2001, funded by the CommerzbankCommerzbankCommerzbank AG is the second-largest bank in Germany, after Deutsche Bank, headquartered in Frankfurt am Main.-Activities:Commerzbank is mainly active in commercial bank, retail banking and mortgaging. It suffered reversals in investment banking in early 2000s and scaled back its Securities unit...
Foundation) - Thieme Prize of the Leopoldina for Medicine
- Medal of Merit (awarded by the Presidium only on special occasions)
Membership
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
) and one quarter from about 30 other nations. The election to membership of the Leopoldina is the highest academic honour awarded by an institution in Germany.
As of 2007, a total of 157 Nobel prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
laureates are fellows of the Leopoldina.
Among the most noted of fellows are for instance:
- Christian Ludwig BrehmChristian Ludwig BrehmChristian Ludwig Brehm was a German pastor and ornithologist. He was the father of Alfred Brehm.Brehm was born near Gotha, and studied at the University of Jena. In 1813 he became the minister at Renthendorf, a village sixty miles south of Leipzig, where he remained until his death...
- Charles DarwinCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
- Albert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
(excluded 1933 for being Jewish) - Gerhard ErtlGerhard ErtlGerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany...
- Johann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von GoetheJohann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
- Theodor W. Hänsch
- Wilhelm OstwaldWilhelm OstwaldFriedrich Wilhelm Ostwald was a Baltic German chemist. He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909 for his work on catalysis, chemical equilibria and reaction velocities...
- Max PlanckMax PlanckMax Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, was a German physicist who actualized the quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Life and career:Planck came...
- Ernest RutherfordErnest RutherfordErnest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM, FRS was a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics...
Presidents 1652-present
- 1652–1665 Johann Lorenz Bausch (SchweinfurtSchweinfurtSchweinfurt is a city in the Lower Franconia region of Bavaria in Germany on the right bank of the canalized Main, which is here spanned by several bridges, 27 km northeast of Würzburg.- History :...
) - 1666–1686 Johann Michael Fehr (Schweinfurt)
- 1686–1693 Johann Georg Volckamer (Nürnberg)
- 1693–1730 Lukas Schröck (AugsburgAugsburgAugsburg is a city in the south-west of Bavaria, Germany. It is a university town and home of the Regierungsbezirk Schwaben and the Bezirk Schwaben. Augsburg is an urban district and home to the institutions of the Landkreis Augsburg. It is, as of 2008, the third-largest city in Bavaria with a...
) - 1730–1735 Johann Jakob Baier (Altdorf bei NürnbergAltdorf bei NürnbergAltdorf bei Nürnberg is a town in south-eastern Germany. It is situated 25 km east of Nuremberg, in the district Nürnberger Land. Its name literally means Altdorf near Nuremberg, to distinguish it from other Altdorfs.-History:...
) - 1735–1769 Andreas Elias Büchner (ErfurtErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nuremberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
, HalleHalle, Saxony-AnhaltHalle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
) - 1770–1788 Ferdinand Jakob Baier (Nürnberg)
- 1788–1791 Heinrich Friedrich Delius (ErlangenErlangenErlangen is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is located at the confluence of the river Regnitz and its large tributary, the Untere Schwabach.Erlangen has more than 100,000 inhabitants....
) - 1791–1810 Johann Christian Daniel von SchreberJohann Christian Daniel von SchreberJohann Christian Daniel von Schreber , often styled I.C.D. von Schreber, was a German naturalist.-Career:He was elected Professor of Materia medica at the University of Erlangen in 1769....
(Erlangen) - 1811–1818 Friedrich von Wendt (Erlangen)
- 1818–1858 Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von EsenbeckChristian Gottfried Daniel Nees von EsenbeckChristian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck was a prolific German botanist, physician, zoologist, and natural philosopher. He was a contemporary of Goethe and was born within the lifetime of Linnaeus. He described approximately 7,000 plant species...
(Erlangen, BonnBonnBonn is the 19th largest city in Germany. Located in the Cologne/Bonn Region, about 25 kilometres south of Cologne on the river Rhine in the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, it was the capital of West Germany from 1949 to 1990 and the official seat of government of united Germany from 1990 to 1999....
, Breslau) - 1858–1862 Dietrich Georg Kieser (JenaJenaJena is a university city in central Germany on the river Saale. It has a population of approx. 103,000 and is the second largest city in the federal state of Thuringia, after Erfurt.-History:Jena was first mentioned in an 1182 document...
) - 1862–1869 Carl Gustav CarusCarl Gustav CarusCarl Gustav Carus was a German physiologist and painter, born at Leipzig.A friend of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, he was a many-sided man: a doctor, a naturalist, a scientist and a psychologist and an advocate of the theory that health of body and mind depends on the equipoise of antagonistic...
(DresdenDresdenDresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
) - 1870–1878 Wilhelm Friedrich Behn (Dresden)
- 1878–1895 Hermann Knoblauch (since then: HalleHalle, Saxony-AnhaltHalle is the largest city in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is also called Halle an der Saale in order to distinguish it from the town of Halle in North Rhine-Westphalia...
) - 1895–1906 Karl von Fritsch
- 1906–1921 Albert Wangerin
- 1921–1924 August Gutzmer
- 1924–1931 Johannes Walther
- 1932–1950 Emil AbderhaldenEmil AbderhaldenEmil Abderhalden was a Swiss biochemist and physiologist. His main findings, though disputed already in the 1920s, were not finally rejected until the late 1990s. Whether his misleading findings were based on fraud or simply the result of a lack of scientific rigor remains unclear...
- 1952–1953 Otto Schlüter
- 1954–1974 Kurt Mothes
- 1974–1990 Heinz Bethge
- 1990–2003 Benno Parthier
- 2003–2010 Volker ter Meulen
- 2010–present Jörg Hacker
External links
- German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, official website.