Academy of Sciences of Turin

The Academy of Sciences of Turin is a scientific and cultural institution founded in 1757 as a private society and raised to a royal academy in 1783; it is housed in the former Collegio dei Nobili, at via Accademia delle Scienze 6, in the same building as the Museo Egizio. Its motto is «Veritas et utilitas».^[1]^[3]^[2]

The private society

In 1757 Count Angelo Saluzzo di Monesiglio, the physician Gianfrancesco Cigna and the mathematician Luigi Lagrange founded a «Società Privata Torinese», which met at the count's house; from 1759 its work was published in the «Miscellanea philosophico mathematica Societatis privatae Taurinensis», the forerunner of today's Memorie.^[1] A first attempt to turn it into an academy on the French model was blocked in 1760 by the ministers of Carlo Emanuele III; among its correspondents in the early years were d'Alembert, Condorcet, Benjamin Franklin, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Linnaeus and Euler.^[1]

The royal academy

In 1783 Vittorio Amedeo III granted the letters patent founding the Royal Academy of Sciences.^[1] The king intended it as a kind of scientific council for modernizing the State, with field research such as the surveys of Piedmont's mines led by Nicolis di Robilant.^[2] The first competition, in 1788, sought new employment for mill workers left jobless by the mulberry-tree crisis; until 1865 the academy acted as an advisor to the Savoy state, examining patents among other things.^[1]

During the French period, in 1801, a class of literature and fine arts was created, which became the Class of Moral, Historical and Philological Sciences in 1815; in 1804 Napoleon was appointed honorary president.^[1] In 1823 the Ministry of the Interior entrusted the academy with reorganizing the new Museo Egizio, and in 1879 the first Bressa Prize went to Charles Darwin.^[1]

The twentieth century

In 1934 members were required to swear loyalty to fascism: those who refused, such as Gaetano De Sanctis and Lionello Venturi, were removed, and others were expelled under the 1938 racial laws; the 1948 statute abolished the fascist-era rules.^[1] Since 1985 the academy has organized the outreach series «I Mercoledì dell'Accademia»; since 2000 it has been a private legal entity, and since 2014 it has belonged to the European federation ALLEA.^[1] Since 1 November 2024 it has been chaired by Marco Mezzalama; its members include more than ten living Nobel laureates.^[4]

The building

The Collegio dei Nobili was conceived in 1678 by the Jesuit Carlo Maurizio Vota and only partly realized by Michelangelo Garove between 1679 and 1690; the first stone was laid in June 1679 by Maria Giovanna Battista di Savoia Nemours.^[3] The academy moved there in 1787, and Giovanni Galliari designed its meeting hall; the college's former theater became the Sala dei Mappamondi, decorated with the symbols of modern sciences.^[3]^[2] In the bombing of 13 July 1943 three of the academy's four rooms were partly destroyed; the monumental portal by Giuseppe Talucchi, dating from 1824, is today the entrance to the Museo Egizio, and the building was restored between 2012 and 2015.^[3]

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