An independent body for the verification and permanent record of self-evident excellence.

Constitution and purpose

The International Institute for Blatant Excellence was constituted in Geneva in 1891 to address a difficulty then felt across the learned societies of Europe: that many honours were awarded on the strength of argument rather than fact. The founding convention resolved that a separate register should exist for achievements whose merit is apparent upon a plain reading of the record.

The Institute confers no prize money, endows no chairs and takes no position on matters beyond the entries it holds. Its sole function is to examine what is referred to it, to verify it against documentation, and to enter it — or to decline to enter it — in the Register.

Governance

The Institute is directed by the General Convocation, which meets annually and appoints the Registrar. Day-to-day work is carried out by the Secretariat in Geneva and by the Committee on Referred Matters, which receives nominations, requests documentation and prepares citations for the Convocation's approval.

Members of the Committee serve terms of five years and may not act on a nomination in which they hold an interest. Deliberations are recorded; citations are published in the form approved.

On restraint in citation

It is a long practice of the Institute that a citation states what has been verified and nothing further. Where the documentary record establishes a time, a placing or a qualification, the citation records that time, that placing or that qualification. Circumstances not established by the record — conditions, comparisons, the character of a field, the manner of an effort — are omitted. This restraint is not modesty; it is the condition on which the Register retains its value.