The Act of Incorporation, signed by President
Abraham Lincoln on March 3, 1863, created the National Academy of Sciences and named 50 charter members. Many of the original
NAS members came from the so-called "
Scientific Lazzaroni", an informal network of mostly physical scientists working in the vicinity of
Cambridge, Massachusetts (). In 1863, the organizers enlisted the support of
Alexander Dallas Bache, and also
Charles Henry Davis, a professional
astronomer who had been recently recalled from the Navy to
Washington to head the
Bureau of Navigation. They also elicited support from Swiss-American geologist
Louis Agassiz and American mathematician
Peirce, who together planned the steps whereby the National Academy of Sciences was to be established. Senator
Henry Wilson of Massachusetts was to name Agassiz to the Board of Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution. Agassiz was to come to Washington, D.C., at the government's expense to plan the organization with the others. This bypassed
Joseph Henry, who was reluctant to have a bill for such an academy presented to
Congress. This was in the belief that such a resolution would be "opposed as something at variance with our democratic institutions". Nevertheless, Henry soon became the second President of NAS. Agassiz, Davis, Peirce,
Benjamin Gould and Senator Wilson met at Bache's house and "hurriedly wrote the bill incorporating the Academy, including in it the name of fifty incorporators". Although hailed as a great step forward in government recognition of the role of science in American society, at the time, the National Academy of Sciences created enormous ill feelings among scientists,The National Academies did not solve the problems facing a nation in
Civil War as the Lazzaroni had hoped, nor did it centralize American scientific efforts. In 1870, the congressional charter was amended to remove the limitation on the number of members. In 2013, astrophysicist
Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked to write a speech for the 150th anniversary of the
Gettysburg Address in which he made the point that one of Lincoln's greatest legacies was establishing NAS in that same year, which had the long-term effect of "setting our Nation on a course of scientifically enlightened governance, without which we all may perish from this Earth". ==Membership==