Finland, Academy of

(Suomen Akatemia), the central government organization for directing scholarly research in Finland. Formed in 1970, it is located in Helsinki. The academy incorporated several agencies, dating from 1918 and responsible for directing scientific research. It also took the place of the old Academy of Finland, which was founded in 1947 as a scientific society of 12 academicians—leaders of science and the arts— appointed to the academy by the president of Finland. The academy is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. It comprises the Central Board for Scientific Research and six research councils, in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture and forestry, technology, social sciences, and the humanities; there is also an administrative bureau.

The Academy of Finland formulates national science policy, plans scholarly and scientific research projects and distributes state grants to carry them out, and appoints and pays the staff of research workers (15 professors, 50 senior and 100 junior research workers, 200 research assistants, and others), for terms of varying lengths, to conduct scholarly and scientific research at higher educational institutions, free of teaching duties. It concludes contracts for scientific research projects, cooperates in international scientific work, and organizes the publication of scholarly reports.

In 1974, M. V. Keldysh became the first foreign member of the Academy of Finland. The microbiologist H. Gyhllenberg became the academy’s president in 1976 and a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR that same year.