With the Académie des Sciences in 2013-2014

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adding Value to a scientific heritage

The Académie des Sciences holds archives dating to its creation

and continuously expands its stock through purchases, donations or

bequests from its members. French and foreign researchers, top-level

university members, come and consult in the Reading Room these

unique documentary sources that make the Académie des Sciences

stand as one of the main conservation institutions where today’s

research in science history commences.

historical archives

During the 2013-2014 period, close to 2,400 items (archive boxes, biographic files, award files, etc.) have been communicated,

500 historical research made on demand and 500 different readers greeted and guided in the Reading Room.

Donations and bequests

Several documents have entered the archives of the Académie des Sciences in 2013-2014:

• the documents of the mathematician Wolfgang Doeblin (1915-1940);

• the letters Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718-1784), a member of the Académie

Royale des Sciences (1772), wrote to Louis-Bernard Guyton de Morveau

(1737-1816), a member of the chemistry section from the 1st class of the

Institut;

• the letters Alexandre Vandermonde (1735-1796), a member of the geometry

class (1785) and then a member of the mechanical arts section of the Institut

(1795), wrote to Lavoisier;

• a letter by Abbé La Caille (1713-1762), an associate astronomer (1745);

• a letter by Jean Rodolphe Perronet (1708-1794), a free associate of the

Académie (1765);

• a letter by Louis Cotte (1740-1815), a corresponding member of the general

physics section from the 1st class of the Institut (1803);

• the archives of Charles de Beauchamp (1883-1977), a corresponding member

of the anatomy and zoology section (1944).

Exhibitions

Owing to the high extent its stock of archives, the Académie des Sciences is often asked to contribute in the making of exhibitions

by lending documents:

• Paris and the industry, 18th-19th Centuries - Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris, 1 December 2013 -7 January 2014;

• Siméon Denis Poisson, mathematics at the service of science - Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie, Paris, 19 March - 19 June

2014;

• The Humboldt Brothers: the Europe of the mind - Observatoire de Paris, 12 May - 11 July 2014;

• Treasures from the Institut de France. First accounts of Ancient Egypt (1850-1900), Arles photography festival, 7 July - 24 August 2014.