The Academy's membership has included Nobel laureates Ivo Andrić, Leopold Ružička, Vladimir Prelog, Glenn T. Seaborg, Mikhail Sholokhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Handke as well as, Josif Pančić, Jovan Cvijić, Branislav Petronijević, Vlaho Bukovac, Mihajlo Pupin, Nikola Tesla, Milutin Milanković, Mihailo Petrović-Alas, Mehmed Meša Selimović, Danilo Kiš, Paja Jovanović, Dmitri Mendeleev, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Jacob Grimm, Antonín Dvořák, Henry Moore and many other scientists, scholars and artists of Serbian and foreign origin.

In 1864, the Society elected to its membership international revolutionary figures as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, and Alexander Herzen, and was immediately abolished for this action by the conservative government of Prince Mihailo Obrenović.

Right after the founding of the Academy, the erection of the building was considered at the representative location in Knez Мihailova Street, which Prince Mihailo Obrenović III donated for educational cause.

The mutual fund of SRA, National Library and The Serbian Country Museum was formed in 1896 by the King's Decree, so that with the initial capital and its own plot, the Academy was able to begin solving the construction problem.

[7] It was the first project in a row which remained unrealized: starting from the plea to eminent architectures Аndra Stevanović,[8] Nikola Nestorović,[9] Milan Kapetanović and Dragutin Đorđević,[10] to make the preliminary designs, through the unsuccessful announcement of the public competition, until the attempt to form the project resembling the building of Yugoslav Academy of Science and Arts from Zagreb[11] and new designs of an architect Konstantin Jovanović.

[13] After more than two decades of attempting to obtain its own building, the Presidency of SRA, by the end of 1910 decided to entrust the design to Dragutin Đorđević and Andra Stevanović.

Large sized building, which takes over the entire plot, was designed with the apartments and stores for rent and with richly оrnamented Art Nouveau decorated passages.

The architectural plastic in the shape of floral arabesques, garlands and Art Nouveau masks, got a new dimension in the attic in the form of full sculpture of the symbolic meaning.

With the enlarged spectre of activities, the need for the necessary spatial capacities increased significantly, so the primary goal was the conversion of the entire building in Knez Mihailova Street into the office space, which included an extensive adaptation.

Perfectly composed interior left room for additional improvement during the next couple of years, so that until today it has been enriched by our eminent artists.

Its building, built at one of the most representative locations of Belgrade urban space, with its architecture makes the inevitable part of the evaluation of, not only local, but also national construction heritage for almost one century.