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The eulogies delivered at the Académie royale des sciences provide precious elements to understand how it worked at the end of the Ancien régime. Indeed, written and read out as they were by their perpetual Secretary, who was the institution’s spokesman, they were an opportunity to highlight the role of scholars in society. It is therefore interesting to read passages of the marquis de Condorcet’s (the last secretary) encomia carefully and place them side by side with sources that document the social history of the Académie. A close reading shows that encomia the secretary remarks and regrets the lack of consideration for the sciences in the administrative apparatus. Condorcet went as far as to outline a collective mode of working in the way of experts’s committees which could fulfill the needs of the society more adequately. However the skills of the academicians could not be exercised in scientific expertise, partly because the traditional practice at the Académie precluded a scholar from taking part in the disciplines which had not previously been inscribed in the Regulations. Our investigation casts light finally on the convergence between Condorcet’s ideal scholar and a series of essays contemporary with the reform of the Académie in the year 1785, their common goal being to give the scientific expertise of academicians an institutional role and legitimacy.