Fortson's Signs, Symbols, and Secret Societies: Berzelius

For listeners of the Ninth House series looking to discover the real history behind the Berzelius society...

The Berzelius Secret Society remains one of the most enigmatic organizations within the landscape of American collegiate traditions. Established at Yale University, it stands as the oldest of the university’s junior societies and the third oldest of its prestigious senior societies. Throughout its existence, the group has balanced an outward-facing commitment to scientific excellence with a deeply private internal culture characterized by mystery and ritual. To understand Berzelius is to understand the evolution of the American academic elite; it represents a transitional period in history where the rigors of the Enlightenment began to merge with the fraternal, often mystical traditions of the mid-nineteenth century.

Named after the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, the society was born from a specific intellectual hunger. In the 1840s, Yale was a bastion of classical education, focusing heavily on Greek, Latin, and theology. However, a group of students felt that the burgeoning fields of science and engineering were being neglected. These individuals sought to create a space where the "new" knowledge of the physical world could be celebrated alongside traditional virtues. Consequently, the society was founded in 1848 by Sheffield Scientific School, Yale’s separate college for the sciences. Unlike other Yale societies that focused on political or literary dominance, Berzelius originally positioned itself as a "scientific" brotherhood, though it quickly adopted the hallmarks of a secret order: a windowless clubhouse, private rituals, and a strictly guarded membership roster.