TEE PRUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 415 



THE EOYAL PEUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



BERLIN. I.* 



By EDWARD F. WILLIAMS, 



CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 



History of the Academy from its founding hy Leibniz and the Elector 

 of Brandenburg in 1700 to the death of Frederich William I, 



in 17JfO. 



rriHE history of the Eoyal Prussian Academy of Science is in reality 

 -*- the history of the development of science in Prussia, one may say 

 throughout the territory covered by the present German empire. 

 Founded July 11, 1700, by the Elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg 

 at the solicitation of his wife Sophie Charlotte and of Leibniz, it not 

 only gave an impulse to scientific research and scholarly investigation 

 1:1 every department of learning in Berlin and throughout Prussia, but 

 became the model after which other societies with similar aims in the 

 German-speaking world were brought into existence. Not quite as old 

 as the French Academy nor as the Royal Society of Great Britain, nor 

 as the Lincei in Rome, it has done as good work as any of them and 

 exerted quite as wide an influence. 



The period embraced in its life covers the period of the reconstruc- 

 tion of the German university and its growth from the unsatisfactory 

 institution of the first quarter of the eighteenth century to its present 

 commanding position in the world of learning. It covers the period 

 in which the gymnasia were remodeled and the foundations laid of that 

 system of common schools (Volksschule) for which Germany is now 

 famous. It covers also the period of French oppression, of the re- 

 'awakening of the national spirit and of the contests which secured 

 political freedom and a united German empire. 



In 1694 the Elector Frederick founded the University of Halle, 

 not long after, the Medical Society of Berlin and, in 1696, the Acad- 

 emy of Arts. He assumed the rank of king on January 18, 1701. 

 He inherited a love of poetry and of learning from his father, the 

 Great Elector, who refounded the universities of Konigsberg and 

 Frankfurt and brought the University of Duisberg into existence. He 

 had planned also a universal university at Brandenburg to be free to 



* For the facts presented in this article the writer is chiefly indebted to 

 Professor Adolf Harnack's masterly history of the academy in four quarto 

 volumes, although other sources of information have not been overlooked. 



