The Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze (‘National Association of the Sciences’) called the Accademia dei XL (‘Academy of the Forty’) is an Italian learned society which was founded in Verona, northern Italy, in 1782.
The idea of forming an academy comprising the leading Italian scientists was put forward in 1766 by the mathematician Antonio Maria Lorgna. By 1781 he had received the support of Alessandro Volta, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich and others. In the following year the academy was created as the Società Italiana, with forty members representing the most important Italian scientists of the period.