The first president was Prof. Jorge Americano, and among the founders there were important scientific personalities of the country, such as Paulo Sawaya, José Reis, Maurício Rocha e Silva, Gastão Rosenfeld and José Ribeiro do Vale, Otto Guilherme Bier, Henrique da Rocha Lima, Alberto Carvalho da Silva, Helena Nader and others.

In the 1970s, during the oppression of civil liberties by the military regime, these conferences became an important public forum for discussion of issues on political freedom, since they were more or less left alone by the military repression apparatus, which acted hugely and mercilessly against mass media communication, student, workers and political organizations.

In the next meetings, in Curitiba (1950) and Belo Horizonte (1951), increasing participation and enthusiasm followed, with the Brazilian Academy of Sciences first involvement, as well as of other scientific societies.

Another significant publications are Jornal da Ciência (Science Newspaper), a daily news email service, site and printed publication; and ComCiência, an on-line scientific journalism review, edited by the Laboratory of Advanced Studies of Journalism (Labjor) of the State University of Campinas.

One of them is the Instituto Ciência Hoje (Science Today Institute), a not-for-profit non-governmental organization of public interest.