World Academy of Art and Science

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The World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) is an international non-governmental scientific organization, an informal and non-official world network of individual fellows elected for distinguished accomplishments in the fields of natural and social sciences, arts and the humanities. The Academy has been striving to promote the growth of Knowledge and also takes efforts to discuss and monitor the social consequences and policy implications of the growing fund of human knowledge.

The idea of founding the Academy was voiced in the 1950s by leading scientists who were concerned about the potential for misuse of scientific discoveries. They included Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and Joseph Rotblat who had been involved in the development of the atomic bomb; Bertrand Russell Philosopher and Pacifist, Joseph Needham, a co-founder of UNESCO; Lord Boyd Orr, the First Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization; George Brock Chisholm, the First Director General of the World Health Organization; and John A. Fleming, former President of the International Council of Scientific Unions; Hermann Joseph Muller, Harold C. Urey, Francis Perrin, Panchanan Maheshwari, Theodore Monod, Detlev Bronk, Harold Lasswell and other outstanding scholars and public figures. The Academy was organized in December, 1960 with the aim of creating an informal world association of the highest scientific and ethical norms and standards.

At present the Academy has not more than 650 Fellows and Associate Fellows from all parts of the world. It has a secretariat in the U.S.A and has divisions in North America and South Eastern Europe. It holds conferences and seminars on a wide range of topics and issues relating to the spread and application of knowledge in such diverse fields as biotechnology, employment, environment, globalization, global security, nuclear disarmament, information revolution and social development. Election in the WAAS is considered as one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist.

In an effort to put new vigor and dynamism to the commitments of the founders, in 2005 WASS formed a standing committee on Peace and Development to strengthen its efforts to bring about an abolition of the nuclear weapons. In achieving this goal, the Academy is also composed of leading politicians, statesmen and heads of various counties as well as Nobel Prize winners.

The Academy is managed by a 19 member board of trustees with a president at the helm. The current president is Walter Truett Anderson, a political scientist, futurist, and author of numerous books.

The president-elect, who assumes office in February 2008, is Jeffrey H. Schwartz, a professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh noted for his work in evolutionary biology.