Robbert Dijkgraaf

By Robbert Dijkgraaf 

Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, in the Mathematics–Natural Sciences Library in Fuld Hall

I am honored and heartened to have joined the Institute for Advanced Study this summer as its ninth Director. The warmness of the welcome that my family and I have felt has surpassed our highest expectations. The Institute certainly has mastered the art of induction.

The start of my Directorship has been highly fortuitous. On July 4, I popped champagne during a 3 a.m. party to celebrate the LHC’s discovery of a particle that looks very much like the Higgs boson—the final element of the Standard Model, to which Institute Faculty and Members have contributed many of the theoretical foundations. I also became the first Leon Levy Professor at the Institute due to the great generosity of the Leon Levy Foundation, founded by Trustee Shelby White and her late husband Leon Levy, which has endowed the Directorship. Additionally, four of our Professors in the School of Natural Sciences—Nima Arkani-Hamed, Juan Maldacena, Nathan Seiberg, and Edward Witten—were awarded the inaugural Fundamental Physics Prize of the Milner Foundation for their path-breaking contributions to fundamental physics. And that was just the first month.

Nearly a century ago, Abraham Flexner, the founding Director of the Institute, introduced the essay “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge.” It was a passionate defense of the value of the freely roaming, creative spirit, and a sharp denunciation of American universities at the time, which Flexner considered to have become large-scale education factories that placed too much emphasis on the practical side of knowledge. Columbia University, for example, offered courses on “practical poultry raising.” Flexner was convinced that the less researchers needed to concern themselves with direct applications, the more they could ultimately contribute to the good of society.

By Graham Farmelo 

Faculty and Members at IAS witnessed the announcement of CERN's discovery of a Higgs-like boson in Bloomberg Hall and later celebrated with macerated strawberries, Higgs-denoted cookies, and a Peeps-populated diorama (above) of CERN’s ATLAS particle detector, created by Marilena LoVerde, Member in the School of Natural Sciences, and Laura Newburgh, a physicist at Princeton University

On Wednesday, July 4, shortly after 4 a.m., the Institute’s new Director, Robbert Dijkgraaf, was in Bloomberg Hall, cracking open three bottles of vintage champagne to begin a rather unusual party. He was among the scientists who had been in the Hall’s lecture theater since 3 a.m. to watch a presentation from Geneva on the latest results from the CERN laboratory’s Large Hadron Collider. In the closing moments, after CERN’s Director-General Rolf Heuer cautiously claimed the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle—“I think we have it, yes?”—applause broke out in the CERN auditorium and in the Bloomberg Hall lecture theater. Within minutes, the IAS party was underway.

The new particle shows several signs that it is the Higgs boson, the only missing piece of the Standard Model, which gives an excellent account of nature’s electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions. Although some physicists had come to doubt whether the boson existed, Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor in the Institute’s School of Natural Sciences, was so confident that in 2007 he bet a year’s salary that it would be detected at the Large Hadron Collider. In the week before the CERN presentation, Arkani-Hamed invited colleagues to the party and organized the catering. Convinced that he had won his bet, he bought three bottles of champagne, including two of Special Cuvée Bollinger.

Robbert Dijkgraaf will become the ninth Director of the Institute, as of July 1, 2012.

On November 14, the Institute for Advanced Study announced the appointment of Robbert Dijkgraaf as its ninth Director, succeeding, as of July 1, 2012, Peter Goddard, who has served as Director since January 2004.

Below, Dijkgraaf speaks about his enthusiasm for the Institute and for using knowledge, creativity, and collaboration to further our understanding of a world of diverse facts, structures, ideas, and cultures.

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I am delighted to come to the Institute for Advanced Study, one of the intellectual centers of the world. The position of Director is highly distinguished, and the list of former Directors is quite intimidating. But I am particularly looking forward to combining at the highest level three elements that have been important in my professional life: the opportunity to collaborate with the very best scientists and scholars; to organize a stimulating environment for great talent from around the world; and to play an active role in science education, advocacy, and diplomacy to engage future generations.

Taking up my appointment as Director of the Institute will feel a bit like coming home. My family and I have only the best recollections of our stays in Princeton. I also expect that in many ways my life will become more focused. My present position as President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences requires giving attention to many different areas, from elementary school programs to industrial affairs, from government policy to international relations. The Institute is remarkably effective as a place for concentration and inspiration.