Qualla: Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Introduction

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bengt Oberger, CC BY-SA 3.0. Every October, the world holds its breath as Stockholm announces who will receive science's highest honors. The Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry, along with the Economics Prize, flow from the deliberations of an institution founded nearly three centuries ago when Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, gathered five colleagues in Stockholm with a revolutionary idea: scientific knowledge should be published in Swedish, not Latin, so that ordinary people could understand it. That democratic impulse still animates the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which has grown from six founders to nearly 650 members and transformed from a local society into the global arbiter of scientific achievement.

Image: Bengt Oberger | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Linnaeus and the Language of Discovery

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Attributed to Carl Fredrich Brander, Public domain. On June 2, 1739, naturalist Carl Linnaeus joined forces with mercantilist Jonas Alströmer, mechanical engineer Mårten Triewald, civil servants Sten Carl Bielke and Carl Wilhelm Cederhielm, and statesman Anders Johan von Höpken to establish an academy fundamentally different from ...

Image: Attributed to Carl Fredrich Brander | Public domain

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: The Weight of the Nobel

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Alfred Nobel's will designated the Academy as selector of Physics and Chemistry laureates, a responsibility it has carried since 1901. The Economics Prize, formally the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, joined the portfolio in 1968. The selec...

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Ten Classes of Knowledge

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bengt Oberger, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Academy divides its approximately 470 Swedish and 175 foreign members into ten classes representing distinct disciplines: Mathematics, Astronomy and Space Science, Physics, Chemistry, Geosciences, Biosciences, Medical Sciences, Engineering Sciences, Social Sciences, and Human...

Image: Bengt Oberger | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: Publishing the Progress of Knowledge

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bengt Oberger, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Academy began publishing its transactions, Vetenskapsakademiens handlingar, in 1739, creating one of the world's oldest continuous scientific journals. By 1826, specialized annual reports in physics, chemistry, technology, botany, and zoology had emerged. Today, the Academy p...

Image: Bengt Oberger | CC BY-SA 3.0

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: A Park, a Mission, and the Future

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonas Bergsten, Public domain. The Academy of Sciences occupies a position within Stockholm's Royal National City Park, a green refuge in the Swedish capital that stretches across land and water. From this setting, the Academy pursues goals that would be familiar to Linnaeus: fostering dialogue across discipli...

Image: Jonas Bergsten | Public domain