7 March 2014
The Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities was established in 1752 by seven distinguished burghers of the city of Haarlem, in the then Republic of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, in order "to promote science" (in the broadest sense, including the "arts"). It is the oldest learned society in the country today and is constituted as a dual body comprising approximately 350 "science promoters" (known as "directors") and an equal number of active scholars (known as "members"), drawn from the natural sciences, the humanities and the social sciences.