National Academy of Sciences

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to the National Academy is one of the highest honors in the scientific field in the United States. Members of the National Academy of Sciences serve pro bono as "advisers to the nation" on science, engineering, and medicine. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code.

Congress legislated and President Abraham Lincoln signed an Act of Congress (1863) establishing the National Academy of Sciences as an independent, trusted nongovernmental institution, created for the purpose of "providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology [and] to provide scientific advice to the government 'whenever called upon' by any government department." This objective gave the academy the purpose of enriching and providing resources to any part of the federal government—rather than serving a single branch or executive agency, in contrast to the Library of Congress or many entities that report to the President. The goal was somewhat unusual at the time, and also different than other knowledge-based entities serving a branch of government, such as the Library of Congress. The academy receives no compensation from the government for its services.

As of 2024^[update], the National Academy of Sciences includes 2,687 NAS members and 531 international members. It employed about 1,100 staff in 2005. Some 190 members have won a Nobel Prize. By its own admission in 1989, the addition of women to the academy "continues at a dismal trickle"; at that time there were 1,516 male members and 57 female members.

The National Academy of Sciences is one of the 135 member organizations of the International Science Council (ISC). Although there is no formal relationship with state and local academies of science, there often is informal dialogue. The National Academy is governed by a 17-member Council, made up of five officers (president, vice president, home secretary, international secretary, and treasurer) and 12 Councilors, all of whom are elected from among the academy membership. Agencies of the United States government fund about 85 percent of the academy's activities. Further funding comes from state governments, private foundations, and industrial organizations.

The council has the ability, ad hoc, to delegate certain tasks to committees. For example, the Committee on Animal Nutrition has produced a series of Nutrient requirements of domestic animals reports since at least 1944, each one being initiated by a different subcommittee of experts in the field, for example, on dairy cattle.^{[citation needed]}

The National Academy of Sciences meets annually in Washington, D.C., which is documented in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), its scholarly journal. The National Academies Press is the publisher for the National Academies and makes more than 5,000 publications freely available on its website.

From 2004 to 2017, the National Academy of Sciences administered the Marian Koshland Science Museum to provide public exhibits and programming related to its policy work. The museum's exhibits focused on climate change and infectious disease. In 2017, the museum closed and made way for a new science outreach program called LabX.