The U.S. National Academy of Sciences Quiz

Answer: 1863 by Abraham Lincoln

It was no coincidence that the NAS was created during the U.S. Civil War. Science and technology were developing rapidly, and the government of Lincoln was eager to have a formal way to bring scientists together to advise it on both military and civil uses of the new knowledge.

Answer: Private non-profit corporation

Although the NAS has a congressional charter, it is not a part of the government. It is actually a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation in the District of Columbia. The intent of its creators was to have a science-based organization that advises the government but is not part of the government. It was designed as an arms-length critic. In the late 1990s, when the status of the organization was questioned in a legal case, the U.S. Congress moved quickly to pass an amendment to the Federal Advisory Committee Act that clarified the NAS's status as separate from the government.

Answer: They are honorific academies of elected members.

The NAS has always been a dual purpose institution. In addition to its mandate to serve as an arm's length advisor to the government on matters of science, technology, and the policies related to them, it has an elected membership of scientists and other individuals to recognize lifetime achievement in the sciences, technology and engineering, medicine and health care, and related areas of life.

The membership arm of the NAS itself has about 2,100 members. The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 and today has over 2,000 members.

In 1970, the third membership academy was created under the same charter: the Institute of Medicine, which has about 1,600 members. All three academies' members are elected by vote of the existing members.

Answer: The National Academies

The umbrella term has of course led to inevitable jokes about "National Academies of what?" Nonetheless, the organizational structure of the NAS and its component organizations is so confusing to many people that a single term was needed. The "National Academy of Sciences" remains the legal entity of the whole.

However, the term "National Academies" encompasses the honorific academies of elected members of NAS, NAE, and IOM as well as the studies and other activities of the National Research Council.

Answer: All of them.

The NAS has had 21 presidents since its establishment in 1863. As one would expect, all had had productive and distinguished careers prior to becoming president. The names above are a few of the more interesting ones. Henry's work on the electromagnetic relay, for example, was a key piece of the growing knowledge base that led to the telegraph, developed famously by Samuel Morse. Remsen's discovery of saccharin was basically an accident. Noticing a sweet taste, that should not have been there, on his rolls at dinner one evening in 1879, he traced the source of the sweetness to an oxidized form of one of the chemicals he had been working with that day.

He named it saccharin and developed it. Ironically, his lab partner patented the chemical, a continued source of frustration for him.

Other presidents were also groundbreakers in the sciences of their age. For example, Thomas Hunt Morgan, who was the first person to win a Nobel Prize in genetics, for his work on the role of chromosomes in heredity.

A name you might recognize is Bruce Alberts, the immediate past president, since his book, "The Molecular Biology of the Cell," is the standard cell biology textbook in most universities.

Answer: The Watergate burglary during the Nixon Administration.

On June 17, 1972, five members of then-president Richard Nixon's "dirty tricks squad" broke into the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. They were discovered by Frank Wills, a security guard at the complex. The men's arrest, the subsequent revelations about the illicit activities of Nixon and other members of the Republican party, and just as important, the cover-up that Nixon and others engaged in led to Nixon's downfall.

He resigned the presidency in August of 1974. At some point after these events, the infamous offices came available and the Institute of Medicine of the NAS leased part of the space.

The IOM has a reproduction of the police report of the break-in, autographed by Frank Wills, among its historical memorabilia.

Answer: Implications of the Wright brothers and human flight

As you can imagine, since this was the middle of the 19th Century and in the midst of a war, most of the early studies were concerned with military matters, especially naval, and were also dominated by questions of chemistry, physics, and engineering. With regard to the study of compasses and iron-clad ships, the NAS study committee not only issued a report in 1864 recommending the use of bar magnets placed strategically around the ships to counteract the effects of the iron in the ships, but the committee subsequently oversaw the correction of compasses on 27 Union vessels.

Answer: Nothing; all efforts are pro bono. Travel expenses only.

Every individual who serves on a study committee, as a reviewer of draft reports, or in any of the academy's study activities serves wholly without pay or fee. In part this is because its original congressional charter says that the NAS will respond to requests without fee, but the NAS also indicates that it is to assure that no committee member or reviewer is serving as anything other than an individual, with no financial relationship to the NAS being involved.

Answer: Wye River Conference Center, Queenstown, MD

The NAS building on Constitution Avenue is one of the few non-governmental building lining the National Mall in Washington, D.C. If you've been a tourist in Washington, you may have stopped for a photo of you or your children climbing on the Einstein Memorial on the NAS grounds. It's a bronze sculpture of Albert Einstein sitting on some steps reading a manuscript, and is 21 feet high. The conference facilities on Cape Cod and in Irvine California were gifts to the NAS from the named families. The Wye River facility is owned by the Aspen Institute, not the NAS.

Answer: Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs)

The RDAs for a series of essential nutrients (e.g., vitamin C, iron, calcium, selenium, etc.) were developed during World War II by a committee of the NAS that became the Food and Nutrition Board. They served as widely used guides for nutrient needs in both the military and civilian populations.

The Food and Nutrition Board became part of the Institute of Medicine (meaning it moved but was still in the NAS) and in the 1990s developed a broader system of nutrient recommendations called the Dietary Reference Intakes. RDAs are only one of the four components of the DRIs, which also include such measures as tolerable Upper Limits for nutrients.