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Anacademician is a full member of an artistic, literary, engineering, or scientific academy. In many countries, it is anhonorific title used to denote a full member of an academy that has a strong influence on national scientific life.
Accordingly, within systems such as theAcademy of Sciences of the USSR, the title grants privileges and administrative responsibilities for funding allocation and research priorities.
Historically, the meaning for the title ofAcademician follows the traditions of the two most successful early scientific societies: either theRoyal Society, where it was an honorary recognition by an independent body of peer reviewers and was meant to distinguish a person, while giving relatively little formal power, or the model of theFrench Academy of Sciences, which was much closer integrated with the government, provided with more state funding as an organization, and where the title ofAcademician implied in a lot more rights when it came to decision making.
Being an academician in China is a top honor and title granted only to the nation's top scientists and engineers. Academicians are elected through either theChinese Academy of Sciences andChinese Academy of Engineering.[citation needed]
The British honours "Fellow of the Royal Society" (FRS) or Fellow of theAcademy of Social Sciences can be considered rough equivalents. Fellowship of theAcademy of Social Sciences was known as the Award of Academician until July 2014.[1] Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK are recognized as academicians and members include Nobel Prize winners and the nation's top engineers and scientists. Recently, Nobel Prize winnerFrances Arnold was elected to the Royal Academy of Engineering.[2]
In the United States of America, academicians are elected members of theNational Academy of Sciences andNational Academy of Engineering. Members include many Nobel Prize, Turing Awards, and Fields Medalists.[citation needed]
Sweden does not use the Academician concept, but membership in learned societies are noted in the Swedish State Calendar. TheSwedish Royal Academies are independent organizations, founded onRoyal command, that act to promote the arts, culture, and science inSweden. TheSwedish Academy andAcademy of Sciences who are responsible for the selection ofNobel Prize laureates inLiterature,Physics,Chemistry, and thePrize in Economic Sciences.[3][4] Also included in the Royal Academies are scientific societies that were granted Royal Charters.[5] There are a few esteemed Swedish learned societies that has not sought Royal command, including theSociety of Sciences in Lund.
Academician may also be a functional title and denote a full member of theNational Academy of Sciences in those countries where the academy has a strong influence on national scientific life, particularly countries that were part of, or influenced by, theSoviet Union. In such countries, academician is used as anhonorific title (like "Doctor", "Professor", etc.) when addressing or speaking about someone. Countries where the termacademician is used in this way include theRussian Federation,China,Armenia,Azerbaijan,Bosnia and Herzegovina,Bulgaria,Croatia,Estonia,Georgia,Hungary,Latvia,Lithuania,Moldova,Mongolia,North Macedonia,Romania,Turkey,Serbia,Slovenia,Tajikistan,Ukraine,Belorussia,Uzbekistan, andEstonia.
However, since the reforms of late USSR dismantled the de facto monopoly of the state on forming academies, the creation of voluntary academies has been allowed. While some of the newly created academies did improve the relatively rigid structure, the prestige and meaning of the title has been substantially undermined; as the title of "academician" could be awarded by associations ofpseudoscientists or organizations that use the title for the sole purpose of gaining money. Therefore, it became customary and almost compulsory to list which academy gave the title to assert its meaningfulness.
In Europe, academicians are elected by Pan-European academies, such as theEuropean Academy of Sciences and Arts and theAcademia Europaea.
In Canada, fellowship of theRoyal Society of Canada is a comparable honour.
InFinland, "Academician" (Finnish:akateemikko,Swedish:akademiker) is an honorary title and thePresident of the Republic nominates the Academicians. There can be 12 Finnish Academicians representing science and scholarly pursuits and eight Academicians representing fine arts and literature at the same time. TheAcademy of Finland is the state funding agency of Finnish science and letters, but it has no organizational connection to Finnish Academicians. The scientists and scholars funded by the Academy of Finland are called Academy Professors (Finnish:akatemiaprofessori,Swedish:akademiprofessor) and Academy Research Fellows (Finnish:akatemiatutkija,Swedish:akademiforskare). In addition to Academy of Finland, Finland has four independent national academies. Finnish academies are less recognized globally due to its lack of international exposure and use of English language.
In Taiwan, elected members ofAcademia Sinica are considered academicians.[6]
A related option of membership also exists in some countries — aCorresponding Member is a person who is eminent in respect of scientific results but cannot or does not wish to become a full academy member.
One of the reasons for this may be that they live far from the academy and it is inconvenient to often travel to its headquarters. It is, for example, the case when the person is not a resident in the country which the academy belongs to.[7] For communication, such a scientist uses "correspondence".[7]
Another possible reason is that the charter or traditions of the academy do not admit election of a person to a full membership, unless they have been a corresponding member for a certain period and has demonstrated additional achievements within this period. Because of this, in theRussian Academy of Sciences a corresponding membership is a seen as a lower level of membership as compared to the academicians.
