Organizations

There are several organizations dedicated to “science”, such as:

• Membership to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the British Science Association is open to everyone.
• Membership to the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London, and the Academy of Sciences (Institute of France) is by invitation.
• Not all the sciences are represented by the awards granted by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, but the top prizes in chemistry, mathematics (modulo the Fields Medal), and physics (modulo the Fundamental Physics Prize) are handed out by these two academies.

Crystallography involves what we now call chemistry and physics, although even the Nobel committees get confused.

• The American Chemical Society was chartered by Congress as part of America’s science & technology efforts.
• The American Physical Society and the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft are the two largest physics societies.
• The International Union of Crystallography has several regional associates and scientific associates.
• The Minerals, Metals, and Materials Society promotes “the global science and engineering professions concerned with minerals, metals, and materials.”
• The Materials Research Society is a multidisciplinary organization.
• The International Union of Materials Research Societies is a fellow member (with the IUCr) of the International Council for Science.

Within the IUCr itself, the Commission on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography promotes mathematical crystallography.

And there are organizations devoted to nano-science and nano-technology.

• The International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering promotes “study of the control of the arrangement of the atoms in matter, examine the principles that lead to such control, to develop tools and methods to increase such control, and to investigate the use of these principles for molecular computation, and for engineering on the finest possible scales.”
• The Nano Science and Technology Institute is “chartered with the promotion and integration of small technologies through education, technology and business development.”

Safety and environmental concerns are explored by the Nanex Project and the Institute for Occupational Medicine‘s Centre of Excellence on Nanotechnology Hazard and Risk (SAFENANO).