Prussian Academy of Sciences in the context of "Hermann Dessau"

Joseph-Louis Lagrange (born Giuseppe Luigi Lagrangia or Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier; 25 January 1736 – 10 April 1813), also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia, was an Italian and naturalized French mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.

In 1766, on the recommendation of Leonhard Euler and d'Alembert, Lagrange succeeded Euler as the director of mathematics at the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Prussia, where he stayed for over twenty years, producing many volumes of work and winning several prizes of the French Academy of Sciences. Lagrange's treatise on analytical mechanics (Mécanique analytique, 4. ed., 2 vols. Paris: Gauthier-Villars et fils, 1788–89), which was written in Berlin and first published in 1788, offered the most comprehensive treatment of classical mechanics since Isaac Newton and formed a basis for the development of mathematical physics in the nineteenth century.

Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist best known for developing the theory of relativity. Einstein also made important contributions to quantum theory. His mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc, which arises from special relativity, has been called "the world's most famous equation". He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for "his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".

Born in the German Empire, Einstein moved to Switzerland in 1895, forsaking his German citizenship (as a subject of the Kingdom of Württemberg) the following year. In 1897, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the mathematics and physics teaching diploma program at the Swiss federal polytechnic school in Zurich, graduating in 1900. He acquired Swiss citizenship a year later, which he kept for the rest of his life, and afterwards secured a permanent position at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. In 1905, he submitted a successful PhD dissertation to the University of Zurich. In 1914, he moved to Berlin to join the Prussian Academy of Sciences and the Humboldt University of Berlin, becoming director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics in 1917; he also became a German citizen again, this time as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia. In 1933, while Einstein was visiting the United States, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. Horrified by the Nazi persecution of his fellow Jews, he decided to remain in the US, and was granted American citizenship in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential German nuclear weapons program and recommending that the US begin similar research, later carried out as the Manhattan Project.

Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (/ˈmɒmzən/; German: [ˈteːodoːɐ̯ ˈmɔmzn̩] ; 30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th century. He received the 1902 Nobel Prize in Literature for his historical writings, including The History of Rome, after having been nominated by 18 members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He was also a prominent German politician, as a member of the Prussian and German parliaments. His works on Roman law and on the law of obligations had a significant impact on the German civil code.

Bekker numbering or Bekker pagination is the standard form of citation to the works of Aristotle. It is based on the page numbers used in the Prussian Academy of Sciences edition of the complete works of Aristotle (1831–1837) and takes its name from the editor of that edition, the classical philologist August Immanuel Bekker (1785–1871); because the academy was located in Berlin, Prussia, the system is occasionally referred to by the alternative name Berlin numbering or Berlin pagination.

Bekker numbers consist of up to three ordered coordinates, or pieces of information: a number, the letter a or b, and another number, which refer respectively to the page number of Bekker's edition of the Greek text of Aristotle's works, the page column (a standard page of Bekker's edition has exactly two columns), and the line number (total lines typically ranging from 20 to 40 on a given column or page in Bekker's edition). For example, the Bekker number denoting the beginning of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is 1094a1, which corresponds to page 1094 of Bekker's edition, first column (column a), line 1.

The Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (German: Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), abbreviated BBAW, is the official academic society for the natural sciences and humanities for the German states of Berlin and Brandenburg. Housed in three locations in and around Berlin, Germany, the BBAW is the largest non-university humanities research institute in the region.

The BBAW was constituted in 1992 by formal treaty between the governments of Berlin and Brandenburg on the basis of several older academies, including the historic Prussian Academy of Sciences from 1700 and East Germany's Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic from 1946. By this tradition, past members include the Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt, Lise Meitner, Theodor Mommsen, Albert Einstein, and Max Planck. Today the BBAW operates as a public law corporation under the auspices of the German National Academy of Sciences, and has over 300 fellows and 250 additional staff members. Its elected scientific membership has included 78 Nobel laureates.