[1] It was since known under the German name Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina until 2007, when it was declared to be Germany's National Academy of Sciences.

[1] The Leopoldina was founded in the imperial city of Schweinfurt on 1 January 1652 under the Latin name Academia Naturae Curiosorum, sometimes translated into English as "Academy of the Curious as to Nature.

"[2] It was founded by four local physicians – Johann Laurentius Bausch, the first president of the society, Johann Michael Fehr, Georg Balthasar Metzger, and Georg Balthasar Wohlfarth; and was the only academy like it at the time making it the oldest academy of science in Germany.

[1] The archives of Leopoldina are some of the oldest in the world based on the fact that the records date back to the 17th century.

[1] In 1670, the society began to publish the Ephemeriden or Miscellanea Curiosa, one of the earliest scientific journals and one which had a particularly strong focus on medicine and related aspects of natural philosophy, such as botany and physiology.

[5][1] Abderhalden resisted the Nazi pressures by reorganizing Sections of the Academy and introducing a new series 'Biographies of German Natural Scientists' in 1932.

During this time, the German Democratic Republic shut down all societies, leading the members of the Leopoldina to meet unofficially and in private.

The Academy was able to stay independent of national politics, which allowed it to bridge East and West Germany through scientific ideas.

[1] In November 2007, German science minister Annette Schavan announced the renaming of the Leopoldina to "German Academy of Sciences" (Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften), and said that "due to its international prestige, the Leopoldina is predestined to represent Germany within the circle of international academies."

[1] The Leopoldina is the first and foremost academic society in Germany to advise the German government on a variety of scientific matters, for instance on climate change and disease control.

The Academy also maintains a library and an archive and it also researches its own history and publishes another journal, Acta Historica Leopoldina devoted to this subject.

15–33 Consistently with its national preeminence, it also collaborates extensively with other learned societies in international exchanges of ideas and policy recommendations.