Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Motto att främja vetenskaperna och stärka deras inflytande i samhället
(to promote the sciences and strengthen their influence in society)
Formation 2 June 1739
Headquarters Stockholm, Sweden
Membership 1600 Fellows
175 Foreign Members
President Svante Lindqvist
Website www.kva.se

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien ("KVA") is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.

The Academy was founded on 2 June 1739 by naturalist Carl Linnaeus, mercantilist Jonas Alströmer, mechanical engineer Mårten Triewald, civil servants Sten Carl Bielke and Carl Wilhelm Cederhielm, and politician Anders Johan von Höpken.[1]

The purpose of the academy was to focus on practically useful knowledge, and to publish in Swedish in order to widely disseminate the academy's findings. The academy was intended to be different from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala, which had been founded in 1719 and published in Latin. The location close to the commercial activities in Sweden's capital (which unlike Uppsala did not have a university at this time) was also intentional. The academy was modeled after the Royal Society of London and Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris, France, which some of the founding members were familiar with.

Committees of the Academy act as selection boards for international prizes:

and national prizes:[7]

Contents

List of permanent secretaries

The following persons have served as permanent secretaries of the Academy:

Publications

The transactions of the Academy (Vetenskapsakademiens handlingar) were published as its main series between 1739 and 1974. In parallel, other major series have appeared and gone:

The Academy started to publish annual reports in physics and chemistry (1826), technology (1827), botany (1831), and zoology (1832). These lasted into the 1860s, when they were replaced by the single Bihang series (meaning: supplement to the transactions). Starting in 1887, this series was once again split into four sections (afdelning), which in 1903 became independent scientific journals of their own, titled "Arkiv för..." (archive for...), among them

Further restructuring of their topics occurred in 1949 and 1974.

The Academy's first online-only (born digital) journal is Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence or "ETAI" (ISSN 1403-3534). It was founded in 1997 by Erik Sandewall, professor of computer science at Linköping University.

Current publications

See also

References

  1. ^ "History". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/About-the-academy/History/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  2. ^ "Nobel Prizes". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Nobelprises/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  3. ^ "Prize in Economic Sciences". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Prize-in-Economic-Sciences/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  4. ^ "Crafoord Prize". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Crafoord-Prize/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  5. ^ "Rolf Schock Prizes". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Rolf-Shock-prisen/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  6. ^ "Gregori Aminoff Prize". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/en/Prizes/Gregori-Aminoff-Prize/. Retrieved 2009-10-18. 
  7. ^ "National prizes". The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. http://www.kva.se/KVA_Root/eng/awards/national/index.asp?br=ns&ver=6up. Retrieved 2007-10-18. 

External links