Paris - Institut de France

The Académie Française, founded by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 to foster the French language, is the oldest of the five learned academies of the Institut de France which have their headquarters in the Palais de l'Institut de France. The members of the Academy, the "quarante Immortels", who are appointed for life, decide whether a word should be admitted into their authoritative Dictionnaire de la Langue Française and thus officially recognized as a French word.

On the 350th anniversary of the Academy's foundation President Mitterand was presented with one of the first copies of the ninth edition of the Dictionary, which contains 45,000 words (the eighth ediion of 1935 had only 35,000). The other academies carry out and promote research in the fields of classical history and archaeology (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, founded 1664), the natural sciences (Académie des Sciences, 1666), the humanities, law and the social sciences (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, 1832) and art (Académie des Beaux-Arts, 1816).

Cardinal Mazarin, dying in 1661, bequeathed money for the foundation of a college to take 15 young nobles from France's new provinces of Artois, Alsace, Piedmont and Roussillon. This Collège des Quatre-Nations, which continued in existence until 1790, was housed in 1691 in a new building, with a chapel and a library, designed by Louis Le Vau. In 1805 Napoleon transferred the five academies, which since 1795 had been brought together in the Institut de France, from the Louvre to the College.

The Palais de l'Institut de France was designed as a counterpart on the left bank of the Seine to the Cour Carrée of the Louvre on the right bank. This accounts for its unexpected size (for only 60 students) and its imposing architecture, which shows the characteristic features of classical French Baroque - the emphasis given to the ends of the main front by the two pavilions (projecting blocks with high- pitched roofs), the alignment of the facade and the drum supporting the dome and the closely set columns. A particular feature is the semicircular facade, with a six-column portico behind which is the dome of what was originally the chapel.

The chapel was converted into the large council chamber in which the academies and the Institute as a whole meet in plenary session. Here too the academies elect new members to fill vacancies caused by death and formally admit the new members.

In spite of assertions to the contrary by critics of the institution, membership of one of the academies still ranks as the climax of any career. Although the membership of the Académie Française has included many internationally renowned figures (Victor Hugo, Prosper Mérimée, Jean Cocteau, René Clair and Eugène Ionesco among them), it is also true that many great philosophers and writers, including Pascal, Molière, Rousseau, Diderot, Balzac, Zola and Proust, have failed to secure admittance to the select company sous la Coupole (under the Dome). In 1980, for the first time in the history of the academies, a woman (Marguerite Yourcenar) was admitted to the Académie Française, followed by the admission of Yvonne Choquet- Bruhat to the Académie des Sciences.