Engineering professional societies

Engineering professional societies

Since British engineers formed the Society of Civil Engineers in 1771, professional engineering societies proliferated. A count in 1963 listed 130 national-level societies in the United States alone. The National Academy of Engineering was founded in 1964. The following table provides the dates of origin and membership in 2000 for some professional societies, as described in their respective websites. ACS, APS, and MAA are not engineering societies but are included for comparison.

Society	Acronym	Origin	Membership
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics	AIAA	1930*	30,000
American Institute of Chemical Engineering	AIChE	1908	57,000
Am. Inst. of Mining, Metallurgical, & Petroleum Engineers	AIME	1871	90,000
American Nuclear Society	ANS	1954	11,000
American Society of Agricultural Engineers	ASAE	1907	9,000
American Society for Engineering Education	ASEE	1893	12,000
American Society of Civil Engineers	ASCE	1852	123,000
American Society of Mechanical Engineers	ASME	1880	125,000
American Society of Metals International	ASM	1913	40,000
Association for Computing Machinery	ACM	1947	80,000
Biomedical Engineering Society	BMES	1968	3,000
Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers	IEEE	1884†	350,000
Institute of Industrial Engineers	IIE	1948	24,000
Material Research Society	MRS	1973	12,500
Society of Automotive Engineers	SAE	1905	80,000
American Chemical Society	ACS	1874	161,000
American Physical Society	APS	1899	42,000
Mathematical Association of America	MAA	1915	30,000

*American Rocket Society (1930) and Institute of Aerospace Science (1932) merged to form AIAA in 1963. †American Institute of Electrical Engineering (1884) and Institute of Radio Engineers (1912) merged to form IEEE in 1963.

References

Lundgreen, P. 1990. Engineering education in Europe and the U.S.A., 1750-1930: The rise of dominance of school cultures and the engineering professions. Annals of Science 47: 33-75.

McMahon, A. M. 1984. The Making of a Profession: A Century of Electrical Engineering in America. New York: IEEE Press.

Mertz, L. E. and Viest, I. M. 1991. The First 75 Years, a History of the Engineering Foundation. New York: Engineering Foundation.

Reynolds, T. S. 1983. 75 Years of Progress: a History of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. NY: AIChE Press.

Sinclair, B. 1980. Centennial History of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Sinclair, B. 1988. Episodes in the history of American engineering professions. In The Professions in American History, ed. by N. O. Hatch, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 127-44.