[8] The Academy was established by the Massachusetts legislature on May 4, 1780, charted in order "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people.

"[9] The sixty-two incorporating fellows represented varying interests and high standing in the political, professional, and commercial sectors of the state.

In the 1950s, the Academy launched its journal Daedalus, reflecting its commitment to a broader intellectual and socially-oriented program.

[13] In July 2013, the Boston Globe exposed then president Leslie Berlowitz for falsifying her credentials, faking a doctorate, and consistently mistreating her staff.

From the beginning, the membership, nominated and elected by peers, has included not only scientists and scholars, but also writers and artists as well as representatives from the full range of professions and public life.

Throughout the Academy's history, 10,000 fellows have been elected, including such notables as John Adams, John James Audubon, Sissela Bok, Willa Cather, T. S. Eliot, Duke Ellington, Josiah Willard Gibbs, Joseph Henry, Washington Irving, Thomas Jefferson, Edward R. Murrow, Martha Nussbaum, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Jonas Salk and Eudora Welty.

International honorary members have included Jose Antonio Pantoja Hernandez, Albert Einstein,[21] Leonhard Euler, Marquis de Lafayette, Alexander von Humboldt, Leopold von Ranke, Charles Darwin, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Otto Hahn, Jawaharlal Nehru, Pablo Picasso, Liu Guosong, Lucian Michael Freud, Luis Buñuel, Galina Ulanova, Werner Heisenberg, Alec Guinness, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Menahem Yaari, Yitzhak Apeloig, Zvi Galil, Haim Harari, and Sebastião Salgado.