The French Academy of Sciences (French: Académie des sciences) is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at the forefront of scientific developments in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is one of the earliest academies of sciences.

The Academy of Sciences owes its origin to Colbert's plan to create a general academy. He chose a small group of scholars who met on 22 December 1666 in the King's library, and thereafter held twice-weekly working meetings there. The first 30 years of the Academy's existence were relatively informal, since no statutes had as yet been laid down for the institution. In contrast to its British counterpart, the Academy was founded as an organ of government. The Academy was expected to remain apolitical, and to avoid discussion of religious and social issues (Conner, 2005, p. 385).

An Academy of Sciences is a national academy or another learned society dedicated to sciences.

In non-English speaking countries, the range of academic fields of the members of a national Academy of Science often includes fields which would not normally be classed as "science" in English. Many languages use a broad term for systematized learning which includes both natural and social sciences and fields such as literary studies, history, art history etc. which are not typically labelled "sciences" in English. This can be illustrated by contrasting examples from the English speaking world and the non-English speaking world. The Australian Academy of Sciences is an organization of natural scientists, reflecting the English use of the term "scientist." There are separate academies for Arts, Humanities and Social Science. The Hungarian "Academy of Science" (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia) however, has members drawn from many other areas of academia, including those not considered science in English. What has presumably happened is that the Hungarian term "tudomány" has been translated as "science" - in a broad sense as it was used in English 200 years ago, and is still used in French and other languages.

L'Académie française (French pronunciation: [lakademi fʀɑ̃sɛz]), also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution, it was restored in 1803 by Napoleon Bonaparte. It is the oldest of the five académies of the Institut de France.

The Académie consists of forty members, known as immortels (immortals). New members are elected by the members of the Académie itself. Académicians hold office for life, but they may be removed for misconduct. Philippe Pétain, named Marshall of France after the victory of Verdun in World War I, was elected to the Academy in 1931 and, following his governorship of Vichy France in World War II, forced to resign his seat in 1945. The body has the task of acting as an official authority on the language; it is charged with publishing an official dictionary of the language. Its rulings, however, are only advisory; not binding on either the public or the government.

Susan Solomon (born 1956 in Chicago) is an atmospheric chemist working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Solomon was one of the first to propose chlorofluorocarbons as the cause of the Antarctic ozone hole.

Solomon is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the Academy of Sciences of France.

Solomon began her interest in science as a child watching The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau. In high school she placed third in a national science fair, with a project that measured the percent of oxygen in a gas mixture.

Solomon received a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Illinois Institute of Technology in 1977. She received her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1981, where she specialized in atmospheric chemistry.

Solomon married Barry Sidwell in 1988.

Solomon is the head of the Chemistry and Climate Processes Group of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Chemical Sciences Division.

Hugh Herr (born October 25, 1964) is an American rock climber, engineer and biophysicist.

The youngest of five siblings of a Mennonite family from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Hugh Herr was a prodigy rock climber: by age eight, he had scaled the face of the 11,627-foot (3,544 m) Mount Temple in the Canadian Rockies, and by 17 he was acknowledged to be one of the best climbers in the United States.

In January 1982, after having ascended a difficult technical ice route in Huntington Ravine on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, Herr and a fellow climber Jeff Batzer were caught in a blizzard and became disoriented, ultimately descending into the Great Gulf where they passed three nights in −20 °F (−29 °C) degree temperatures. By the time they were rescued, the climbers had suffered severe frostbite. Both of Herr’s legs had to be amputated below the knees; his companion lost his lower left leg, the toes on his right foot, and the fingers on his right hand. During the rescue attempt, volunteer Albert Dow was killed by an avalanche.