The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters is the largest general scientific and academic society in Finland. It is a learned society covering the full range of academic disciplines which is devoted to the promotion of scientific and scholarly research and serves as a bond uniting researchers engaged in these activities at the highest level. It functions as a traditional learned society in the sense that its membership is limited and it selects its new members on their academic and scientific merits. Its pursues its declared aims by arranging lectures and discussion meetings, publishing scientific papers, awarding grants and making recommendations and statements of opinion to the authorities in matters concerned with scientific and academic research and those who practice it. The Academy is represented on many scientific committees and in various organizations and foundations.