[1] The Academy degli Inquieti was founded in Bologna around 1690 by Eustachio Manfredi as a place where mathematical topics could be discussed.

At first, the academy held its meetings in Manfredi's house, where it began to attract scholars working in other disciplines such as anatomy and physiology, from Bologna and from nearby provinces.

His ambition, never fulfilled, was to complete his Treatise on the Structure of the Earthy Globe, of which about 200 sheets have been preserved in the University of Bologna's library.

[4] Marsigli's goal with the institute was to gather all modern scientific knowledge within the rooms of an old senatorial residence, the Palazzo Poggi.

[11] The institute helped pull Bologna out of its provincial isolation, reengaging with centers such as the French Academy of Sciences and the British Royal Society.

[13] The influence of Aldrovandi may be seen in the "liberal Diluvianism[a]" of the institute's scientists at this time, who believed in a "balanced integration of science, philosophy and religion.

In 1743 the institute obtained the donation of the Naturalia Museum collection of natural objects that had been assembled by Senator Ferdinando Cospi.

[13] In 1744 the advice of Pieter van Musschenbroek and Willem 's Gravesande was sought in acquiring instruments from the Netherlands to teach and explore the theories of Galileo and Newton.

In 1754 Cardinal Filippo Maria Monti gave the institute his 12,000-volume library and a collection of paintings that included portraits of major scientific figures.

[16] The physicist Laura Bassi, who in 1732 had become the second European woman to be awarded a university degree, became a member of the institute where she presented annual papers such as her 1746 On the compression of air.

The chemist Bartolomeo Beccari looked for ways to make populations resistant to famine through a new type of emergency diet.

The academy reached a high level of scientific progress towards the end of the eighteenth century under its President Luigi Galvani.

In 1791 he published his revolutionary treaty de viribus electricitatis in motu musculari ("Commentary on the Force of Electricity on Muscular Motion").

At the start of the twentieth century there was a move to establish a new faculty of human sciences, led by scholars such as Giosuè Carducci and Giovanni Pascoli.