Connecticut academy of arts and sciences

The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1799 in New Haven. The goal of the academy is to represent the arts, the humanities, and the sciences in the state through its meetings and publications. It publishes Memoirs and Transactions. The academy continues to hold several meetings a year at various academic institutions around the state.

From the description of Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences records, 1799-1987 (inclusive). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 702168195

The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1799 in New Haven. The goal of the academy is to represent the arts, the humanities, and the sciences in the state through its meetings and publications. It publishes Memoirs and Transactions. The academy continues to hold several meetings a year at various academic institutions around the state.

The constitution of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences declares that "The object of this Academy is to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest and happiness of a free and virtuous people." Over the years it has been the goal of the Academy to represent the arts, the humanities and the sciences in Connecticut through its meetings and publications.

In 1779, the year after Ezra Stiles became president of Yale College, he proposed the founding of a learned society in Connecticut that would embrace the purposes of the American Philosophical Society which had been established by Benjamin Franklin in 1769. Stiles discussed the project with Benjamin Guild of Harvard who, with his associates, founded the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1780, but a Connecticut society was politically untimely and would not come to fruition until 1799, four years after Timothy Dwight had succeeded Stiles as president of Yale College.

One of the first activities of the Academy was to issue a statewide circular in January 1800 requesting comprehensive information for a proposed "Statistical Account of Towns and Parishes in the State of Connecticut." This was Timothy Dwight's idea, and he produced a masterful pamphlet on the statistics of New Haven which was published by the Academy in 1811. Materials on other towns continued to be received until 1827, but the project was never completed and nothing more was ever published. Meteorology also commanded the attention of the Academy from its earliest days. In 1800, the Academy began recording meteorological observations for New Haven, a practice that it would support for more than fifty years.

From 1810 to 1816 the Academy published 25 papers in the first volume of its new journal, Memoirs. In 1818, the Academy abandoned publication of Memoirs when Benjamin Silliman the elder inaugurated the new American Journal of Science, which provided a frequent and regular medium of publication. However, the Academy later found that it had available a considerable amount of material which was not deemed suitable for publication in the American Journal of Science . Thus Transactions, a new series of publications, was inaugurated in 1866. The early issues of the Transactions also listed officers and members of committees as well as additions to the Academy library by gift and exchange at the beginning of each volume.

Silliman served as president of the Academy from 1836 to 1847. During this time the Academy became intellectually and emotionally involved with the dramatic affair of the Spanish slave ship Amistad and its mutinous captives. While the captives were awaiting trial in the New Haven jail in 1839, one of the Academy members, Josiah Willard Gibbs the elder, used his knowledge of philology and his resourcefulness to develop a means of conversing with the Africans so that their side of the story could be told. The Africans were eventually freed by the U.S. Supreme Court and were repatriated in 1841 - the only such captives ever to escape permanent servitude and to return home.

In the nineteenth century, the meetings and publications had been primarily concerned with the natural and physical sciences. An agreement between the Academy and Yale in 1906 brought financial aid for increased publication and encouraged the Academy to widen its range of interests; papers were subsequently presented on history, economics, philosophy, linguistics, and belle-lettres in addition to continuing communications in biology, geology, chemistry, physics and engineering.

After George Eaton became secretary of the Academy in 1907, publication of the Transactions was accelerated and in 1910 the Memoirs of the Academy reappeared, this time in quarto form for major illustrated works. Eaton added editorial work to his other duties and continued in office until 1946, a remarkable record of devoted service sustaining a steady tradition through two wars and many academic changes.

In addition to Memoirs and Transactions, the Academy undertook a special publication, "A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500" edited by John Edwin Wells (1916). The manual became a standard reference tool and continues to be supplemented.

The Academy was able to distribute its publications more widely through an agreement with the Yale University Library. The Library gave the Academy an annual subvention for publications which the Library used in its exchange program with other institutions. This support continues. By 1973 the Academy's library was given to Yale University.

In 1954 the Academy joined with the Connecticut Science Teachers' Association to sponsor an annual High School Sciences Talent Search in Connecticut. This project took place during the long and dedicated service of Dorothea Rudnick as secretary of the Academy. She took office at the 978th meeting in October, 1946 and served as secretary through September, 1986.

The Academy was always intimately associated with Yale and for the first 150 years its meetings were held at a variety of locations in New Haven. Thus its active members were only those living within a convenient distance of New Haven who could attend meetings and cast their vote. In the early 1950s, the council discussed the desirability of encouraging more participation from other institutions in Connecticut, and in 1952 the Academy convened a meeting at Storrs to welcome new members from the University of Connecticut. On the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the Academy in 1974 a meeting was held at Wesleyan University; Southern Connecticut State University was added in 1984 and Trinity College in 1991.

For additional details on the history of the Academy up to 1949, consult the Rollin G. Osterweis "Sesquicentennial History of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences" in its Transactions, volume 38, pages 103-149 upon which this summary is based.

From the guide to the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences records, 1799-1987, (Manuscripts and Archives)