Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences

The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (CAAS) is a learned society founded in 1799 in New Haven, Connecticut "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest and happiness of a free and virtuous people." Its purpose is the dissemination of scholarly information.

In the 2023–2024 academic year, the CAAS had 307 members.

Publications

• Transactions of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Memoirs of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Catalogue of publications

Notable members

• Asger Aaboe, historian and mathematician
• Hezekiah Augur, sculptor and inventor
• Simeon E. Baldwin, jurist, law professor and governor
• Charles Emerson Beecher, paleontologist
• Bertram Boltwood, radiochemist
• Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, graphic designer, artist and educator
• William Henry Brewer, botanist
• George Jarvis Brush, mineralogist and academic administrator
• Henry A. Bumstead, electromagnetist
• Russell Henry Chittenden, biochemist
• Edward Salisbury Dana, mineralogist and physicist
• Arnold Dashefsky, sociologist
• Franklin Bowditch Dexter, librarian and university administrator
• Timothy Dwight, educator and theologian
• Edson Fessenden Gallaudet, aviator
• Josiah Willard Gibbs, physicist, chemist, and mathematician
• Frank Austin Gooch, chemist and engineer
• Henry Solon Graves, forester and educator
• Charles Sheldon Hastings, physicist
• Yandell Henderson, physiologist
• James Mason Hoppin, educator and writer
• George Trumbull Ladd, philosopher, educator, and psychologist
• Joseph LaPalombara, political scientist
• Charles Lemert, sociologist
• Linda Lorimer, university administrator
• Chester Lyman, president
• George Grant MacCurdy, anthropologist
• Ronald Mallett, theoretical physicist
• Lafayette Mendel, nutritionist
• Hubert Anson Newton, astronomer and mathematician
• Alexander Petrunkevitch, arachnologist
• Charles Brinckerhoff Richards, engineer
• William North Rice, geologist, educator, Methodist theologian
• John Rose, organist
• Edward Elbridge Salisbury, Sanskritist
• Benjamin Silliman, chemist and geologist
• H. Catherine W. Skinner, geologist, mineralogist, and the first woman to serve as president of the Academy. ^[1]
• Joseph Siry, architectural historian
• Gaddis Smith, historian
• Percey F. Smith, mathematician
• Jennifer Tucker, historian and biologist
• Addison Van Name, librarian and linguist
• John Monroe Van Vleck, mathematician and astronomer
• Addison Emery Verrill, president
• Noah Webster, lexicographer, author, editor, prolific author
• Eli Whitney, inventor of cotton gin
• William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr., literary theorist and critic

Sources

• Rollin Gustav Osterweis, The Sesquicentennial History of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (New Haven, 1949)
• Mary Ellen Ellsworth, A History of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 1799-1999 (Transactions, vol. 55) ISBN   9781878500816

External links

• Official website
• Scholarly Societies entry

• Connecticut portal

1. Tignor, Gregory H. "Modern CAAS Presidents". Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved December 15, 2025.