Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is a scientific academy of the Vatican City, established in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical, and natural sciences and the study of related epistemological problems. The Accademia Pontificia dei Nuovi Lincei was founded in 1847 as a more closely supervised successor to the Accademia dei Lincei established in Rome in 1603 by the learned Roman Prince, Federico Cesi (1585–1630), who was a young botanist and naturalist, and which claimed Galileo Galilei as its president. The Accademia nazionale dei Lincei survives as a wholly separate institution because the academy was de facto divided in 1874 between a Pontifical academy, rebranded in 1936, and a National academy of the Kingdom of Italy.