TED’s mission is to discover and champion the ideas that will shape tomorrow. Powerful ideas, powerfully presented, can move us to feel something, to think differently, to take action and create a brighter future.
TED finds these powerful ideas across disciplines and around the globe, from people who passionately seek a deeper understanding of the world and want to make a difference in it. TED’s spotlight, and its engaged, open-minded audience, help these ideas to create real impact: to shift one person’s perspective, to make a difference within a community or to spark global transformation.
Ideas change everything.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association. In addition to organizing membership activities, AAAS publishes Science magazine and the Science family of journals, as well as many scientific newsletters and reports, and spearheads programs that raise the bar of understanding for science worldwide.
AAAS seeks to "advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all." To fulfill this mission, the AAAS Board has set the following goals:
- Advance scientific excellence and achievement
- Foster inclusivity for scientific excellence
- Build trust among scientists and communities
- Catalyze progress where science meets policy
The Royal Society is the world's oldest scientific academy in continuous existence, and has been at the forefront of enquiry and discovery since its foundation in 1660.
The backbone of the Society is its Fellowship of the most eminent scientists of the day, elected by peer review for life and entitled to use FRS after their name. There are currently more than 60 Nobel Laureates amongst the Society's approximately 1400 Fellows and Foreign Members.
Throughout its history, the Society has promoted excellence in science through its Fellowship and Foreign Membership, which has included Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Ernest Rutherford, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin, Francis Crick, James Watson and Stephen Hawking.
The Society is independent of government, as it has been throughout its existence, by virtue of its Royal Charters. In 1663, The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge was granted its Arms and adopted the motto "Nullius in verba", an expression of its enduring commitment to empirical evidence as the basis of knowledge about the natural world.
The Society's activities include influencing science and education policy, funding leading researchers, publishing journals that span all the sciences and the history of science, and the provision of science communication activities for a variety of public audiences.