The American Academy of Arts and Sciences was founded in 1780, during the American Revolution, by John Adams, James Bowdouin, John Hancock and others. According to its charter, "The end and design of the institution is to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honour, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." Its members have included George Washington and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century, Daniel Webster and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the nineteenth, and Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill in the twentieth. The current membership includes more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners. According to its current Chief Executive Officer: "Since 1780, the Academy has served the public good by convening leading thinkers and doers from diverse perspectives to provide practical policy solutions to the pressing issues of the day".

Guinevere Kauffmann was elected to the AAAS "for developing techniques to calculate numerically the creation and evolution of galaxies and black holes in the early universe." Other astrophysicists elected in 2009 were Craig Hogan, Director of the Center for Particle Astrophysics at Fermilab, and Alexander von Humboldt Prize holder at MPA, and Eric Becklin, Director of the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrard Astronomy (SOFIA). Other new members this year include Mario Capecchi, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Volker ter Meulen, the President of the German National Academy, the author Thomas Pynchon, the actors Dustin Hoffman and Judy Dench, the singers Marilyn Horne, Emmy Lou Harris and Bono, and the politicians, Robert Gates and Nelson Mandela. The latter is of particular interest to Guinevere Kauffmann since she grew up and went to university in South Africa during the period when Mandela was still in jail, but was nevertheless a focus for resistance to the apartheid regime.