A Short History of the Academy

TÜBA was founded in 1993 as an independent, national academy covering all fields of science. However, since the late Ottoman period, there have been various institutions in our country that have the characteristics of science academies. The Semâniye Madrasah during the reign of Fatih Sultan Mehmed is one of the earliest examples. Encümen-i Dâniş is considered to be the first Turkish Science Academy in the modern sense. This committee, which operated between 1851 and 1862 and was modelled on the French Academy of Sciences, was supposed to prepare textbooks for the Darülfünûn (University) that would be founded in the following years, but it was closed after ten years. Founded in 1861, Cemiyet-i İlmiye-i Osmaniye was another academy-like institution of the Tanzimat Period. This organization, which had 38 members in the field of natural sciences and published the first journal in the same field, Mecmua-i Fünûn, was closed in 1866. The Tarih-i Osmanî Encümeni, founded in 1909 after the declaration of the Second Constitutional Era, became the academy-like organization of the Ottoman period, while the Turkish Language Society and the Turkish Historical Society, founded in 1932, and became the academy-like institutions of the republican period.

While the idea of establishing an academy of sciences covering all fields of science in Türkiye became a prominent issue in the 1960s, TÜBA was established in 1993.