Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities

The Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in German the Niedersächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, is described as the oldest continuously existing institution among the eight scientific academies in Germany. It began as the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften, the Royal Society of Sciences, founded in 1751 by King George II of Great Britain, and its first president was the Swiss natural historian and poet Albrecht von Haller. It promotes research under its own auspices and in collaboration with scholars inside and outside Germany, has its seat in the university town of Göttingen, and elects local and corresponding members. In this atlas it appears as the learned society that made the engineer Johann Helfrich von Mller of Darmstadt a corresponding member in 1784, the year he showed his difference engine to the academy.