National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Scientific research center in Minsk, Belarus

The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is the country's highest state scientific organization, subordinate to the president and accountable to the Council of Ministers. Its Presidium sits in Minsk and oversees seven departmental divisions, from agrarian and biological sciences to physics, mathematics and informatics. Affiliated bodies include the Central Botanical Garden and the Yakub Kolas Central Scientific Library.

The institution was founded in 1929 as an outgrowth of the Institute of Belarusian Culture and developed into a major research organization during the Soviet era. Following independence in 1991, it became the principal scientific body of the modern Belarusian state.

The Academy's name traces to the Institute of Belarusian Culture, founded on 30 January 1922, whose first chairman was the linguist Ściapan Niekraševič. In 1922–1924 it published six compilations of Belarusian terminology with 15,000 terms, and its members included the writers Janka Kupala and Jakub Kolas. Today the Academy still awards prizes and runs the Central Botanical Garden and the Jakub Kolas Central Scientific Library.

The Academy's main building stands at Independence Avenue 66, with the presidium and several institutes grouped around it; the Central Botanical Garden and the Yakub Kolas Central Scientific Library are separate branches elsewhere in Minsk. Access to the institutes is by prior arrangement, so check opening conditions before travelling.

The Academy's first president, historian Usievalad Ihnatoŭski, took his post in 1929, when the staff numbered 128, only 87 of them researchers and almost none with a university degree. He was excluded from the party and took his own life in 1931; his two successors, Pavel Gorin and Ivan Surta, were shot as "enemies of the people".