The motto “Fecundat et ornat” (it fertilizes and adorns) was chosen when the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities was founded by the ruler of the state, King George II of Great Britain, Elector of Hanover, in 1751. The Academy’s first president was Albrecht von Haller. To this day, its members strive to do justice to this motto, which can be found on the Academy’s seal, pointing to a special characteristic of the Göttingen Academy: It has always had a close relationship with the local university. As the second oldest institution of its kind, it looks back on a long tradition of famous fellows such as Christian Gottlob Heyne, Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, David Hilbert, and Werner Heisenberg, to name just a few. Today, Göttingen Academy fellows are responsible for more than 20 long-term projects of national and international significance, among them the exploration of the inscriptions of the Egyptian temple at Edfu, the Encyclopedia of the Folktale, the Goethe Dictionary and the Septuaginta Venture, which seeks to create one critical text of the Old Testament from all existing Greek manuscripts. For some years now, the Göttingen Academy has also increasingly reached out to the public, e.g. through public lectures organized jointly with the university, or during “Academy Week”, which addresses a new relevant topic each year. Excellent research performance is supported by the Academy through awards, with special attention devoted to the work of junior scientists.