Academic Year 2007-2008

Eric Maskin and Nathan Seiberg Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Eric S. Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science and Nathan Seiberg, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, have been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences for their excellence in original scientific research.   Membership in the NAS is one of the highest honors given to a scientist or engineer in the United States. Professors Maskin and Seiberg will be inducted into the Academy next April during its 146th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.  Among the 72 new members and 18 foreign associates are five former Members and Visitors to the Institute, including two from the School of Mathematics, two from the School of Natural Sciences and one from the School of Social Science.

Institute Faculty Member, Trustees Elected to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Joan Wallach Scott, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, has been named a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.   Joining her in the 2008 class of Fellows are Institute Trustees James H. Simons, President and Founder of Renaissance Technologies and former Member in the School of Mathematics, and Charles Simonyi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Intentional Software Corp.  Among the 190 new Fellows and 22 Foreign Honorary Members are 13 former Members and Visitors to the Institute, including five from the School of Mathematics, three each from the School of Social Science and the School of Natural Sciences, and two from the School of Historical Studies. A broad-based membership, comprised of scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business, gives the Academy a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.  Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members are nominated and elected to the Academy by current members.  The 2008 class will be inducted on October 11 at ceremonies held at the Academy's headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nima Arkani-Hamed Wins 2008 Sackler Prize

Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been named the recipient of the 2008 Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Physics, presented by Tel Aviv University.  This year's research field was Beyond the Standard Model in the LHC Era. 

The Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in the Physical Sciences, awarded at Tel-Aviv University, has been established through the generosity of Dr. Raymond and Mrs. Beverly Sackler.  It is awarded alternatively in the fields of Physics and Chemistry to an outstanding scientist who is not older than forty-two.  The prize is intended to encourage dedication to science, originality, and excellence by awarding outstanding young scientists. 

Arkani-Hamed was cited for his "novel, deep and highly influential contributions to new paradigms for physics beyond the Standard Model at the TeV energy scale, especially the ideas of large extra dimensions and of the large hierarchy of strengths of fundamental forces in Nature, including gravity; supersymmetry model-building; theories of flavor and of neutrino masses; and models of the cosmological constant." 

Arkani-Hamed, who joined the Faculty at the Institute in January 2008, will be honored at the Tel Aviv University's Board of Governors' annual meeting in May.  The Sackler Prize in Physics was first awarded in 2000, when School of Natural Sciences Professor Juan Maldacena was one of two recipients in the research field of Theoretical High Energy Physics. 

Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. Named President and CEO of TIAA-CREF 

Institute Trustee Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., has been named President and CEO of TIAA-CREF, the leading retirement system for people who work in the academic, research, medical, and cultural fields, effective April 14.  Ferguson had been Chairman of Swiss Re America Holding Corporation and, previously, Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.  He succeeds the retiring Herbert M. Allison, Jr.  Ferguson has also been appointed President of the Harvard University Board of Overseers, the school's second-highest governing body, for the academic year 2008-09.  This will mark the final year of his six-year term as overseer at the university.  Ferguson has served on the Institute's Board of Trustees since 2004.

Institute Supports Science Curriculum Innovation in Princeton Regional Schools

Institute Director Peter Goddard participated in a ceremony on April 14 at Princeton High School to mark formally the Institute's pledge of $100,000 to the Princeton Education Foundation to support innovations in the science curriculum at Princeton Regional Schools.  Dr. Goddard cut the ribbon in the hallway of the new biology wing, where a plaque was unveiled that reads, "In grateful recognition of a donation from the Institute for Advanced Study." 

"The Institute for Advanced Study is delighted to have the opportunity to support the outstanding educational work of the Princeton High School. We are proud to be associated with the biology floor of the High School, and with the opportunities for students to learn about exciting scientific developments that are changing our understanding of the basic processes of life and will be impacting our lives in the decades to come," said Dr. Goddard. 

Noga Alon Wins 2008 Israel Prize

Israeli Education Minister Yuli Tamir announced on Monday, March 10, that Tel Aviv University Professor Noga Alon has won the Israel Prize in Mathematics for 2008. Alon is currently a Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute, a five-year appointment that commenced in 2004-05. The citation for the prize notes that Alon is a world leader in combinatorics - the mathematics of discrete structures - focusing on graph theory and applications to theoretical computer science. He has written more than 400 articles on the subject, and his work changed the face of modern combinatorics, introducing new notions, structures, and methods.  He solved several long standing open problems in combinatorics, graph theory, and Ramsey theory, including a problem  posed in the 1950s by Claude Shannon, the father of Information Theory.  Alon has supervised many graduate students in Mathematics and Computer Science including faculty members in universities in Israel, the US, and England.  This prize adds to a long list of prestigious international awards Alon has received, including the Polya Prize and the Goedel prize. Alon was born in Haifa in 1956 and has degrees from the Technion, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Arnold Levine Receives 2008 Landon Prize and Dart/NYU Biotechnology Achievement Award

The American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) has named Arnold J. Levine, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences who leads The Simons Center for Systems Biology, as the recipient of the 2008 Kirk A. Landon-AACR Prize for Basic Cancer Research.  The prize is designed to promote and reward seminal contributions to the understanding of cancer through basic cancer research.  Professor Levine is being recognized for his significant contributions to the discovery of p53 as a tumor suppressor gene and his work in identifying its anti-cancer mechanisms.  According to the AACR, the Landon Prize was first presented in 2002 to heighten the attention of scientists and members of the general public to landmark scientific achievements in the continuing effort to prevent and cure cancer; to recognize and reward cancer scientists for these extraordinary accomplishments; and to stimulate the development of new thinking and novel concepts in both basic and translational research through the presentation of exciting scientific lectures by the Prize winners, thus inspiring other cancer researchers to uncover the mysteries of this complex disease.  Professor Levine is the seventh scientist to receive the award, which will be presented in San Diego in April at the AACR Annual Meeting. Professor Levine has also been selected to receive the Dart/NYU Biotechnology Achievement Award in Basic Biotechnology from the NYU Biotechnology Center for his isolation, cloning, and characterizing the properties of the p53 gene, a tumor suppressor gene whose mutations are implicated in a number of cancers. He will receive the award on March 31.

Michael Walzer Receives 2008 Spinozalens Award

The Internationale Spinozaprijs Foundation in the Netherlands has named Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Science, as the recipient of the 2008 Spinozalens award.  First awarded in 1999, the prize is designed to stimulate debate about ethics and society.  Professor Walzer is the fifth recipient of the award, which will be presented in Amsterdam in April, the "Month of Philosophy."  The Spinozalens is named after Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza.  The jury, made up of philosophers and scientists from the Netherlands and Flanders, awards the Spinozalens to an illustrious thinker on ethics and society. According to the jury, Professor Walzer was chosen because he is "one of the most important and versatile political thinkers of our time. He investigates social issues that are highly controversial, such as the question whether or not there is such a thing as a just war. In his philosophy the market is not the measure of all things, instead every way of life has its own sphere of justice. In the clash of cultures he pleads a case for tolerance to be the voice of reason."  Previous winners of the prize include Avishai Margalit, George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies.

IAS Receives Honors from AMS

At the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego, California, January 6-9, 2008, the American Mathematical Society (AMS) honored a number of individuals affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study.  Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School of Mathematics, was selected to present the prestigious AMS Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture.  Professor Wigderson's lecture was titled "Randomness -- A Computational Complexity View."  The AMS Council established the Josiah Willard Gibbs Lectureship in 1923 in order to show the public some idea of the aspects of mathematics and its applications. The speakers for these public lectures are selected by invitation, and it is hoped that these lectures will enable the public and the academic community to become aware of the contribution that mathematics is making to present-day thinking and to modern civilization.  Previous presenters of the Gibbs Lecture affiliated with the Institute include Albert Einstein, Hermann Weyl, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, Marston Morse, C.N. Yang, Freeman Dyson, and Edward Witten.

The 2008 Joseph Doob Prize was presented to Enrico Bombieri, IBM von Neumann Professor in the School of Mathematics, and Walter Gubler of the University of Dortmund in Germany.  The Doob Prize is awarded every three years to recognize a single, relatively recent, outstanding research book that makes a seminal contribution to the research literature, reflects the highest standards of research exposition, and promises to have a deep and long-term impact in its area.  Professors Bombieri and Gubler were honored for their book Heights in Diophantine Geometry (Cambridge University Press, 2006).

The 2008 Levi L. Conant Prize was presented to Professor Wigderson, Shlomo Hoory of IBM Haifa Research Labs, and Nathan Linial of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.   The Conant Prize is awarded annually and recognizes an outstanding expository paper published in either the Notices of the AMS or the Bulletin of the AMS in the preceding five years.  The three authors were honored for their article, "Expander graphs and their applications," Bulletin of the AMS, volume 43, number 4 (2006) 439-561.

The 2008 Leroy P. Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research was presented to Endre Szemerédi, Member in the School of Mathematics.  Szemerédi, of Rutgers University and the Alfred Renyi Institute in Budapest, was honored for his landmark paper "On sets of integers containing no k elements in arithmetic progression," ACTA ARITHMETICA XXVII (1975), pages 199-245.  The paper for which the Steele Prize was awarded to Szemeredi is a founding basis for the special program on Arithmetic Combinatorics held in the school of mathematics in the Fall term 2007.

Former Director of the Institute for Advanced Study/Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), C. Herbert Clemens, of Ohio State University, received the AMS Award for Distinguished Public Service for his superb research in complex algebraic geometry, for his efforts in education at the local and national levels, and for his seminal role in the founding and continuation of PCMI.

New Bahcall Fellowships Announced

Nadia Zakamska and Zheng Zheng, Members in the School of Natural Sciences, have received John Bahcall Fellowships effective January 1, 2008.  SNS Member Aldo Serenelli continues his Bahcall Fellowship through this academic year.  The fellowships were established to commemorate John Bahcall (1934-2005), who was a member of the Faculty in the School of Natural Sciences for 34 years, establishing the world-leading astrophysics group at the Institute. He was named Richard Black Professor of Astrophysics in 1997 and served in this position until his death. 

Nadia Zakamska received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, and her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2005. Since then, she has been at the Institute on a Spitzer Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research specialty is the discovery and observation of "hidden" quasars that are obscured by dust and gas, using telescopes at optical, infrared, and X-ray wavelengths, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in which the Institute is a partner.  Zheng Zheng received his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Beijing and his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 2004, at which time he came to the Institute. His research is focused on the formation and evolution of galaxies, their relation to the distribution of dark matter, gravitational lensing, and the intergalactic medium.

To commemorate John Bahcall's outstanding achievements, the Institute is seeking to endow further John Bahcall Fellowships to support Memberships in Astrophysics in the School of Natural Sciences.  If you are interested in supporting the Bahcall Fellowships, please contact Michael Gehret, Associate Director of the Institute, at 609-734-8218.

Pierre Ramond Awarded Lise Meitner Prize

Pierre Ramond, Member in the School of Natural Sciences, will receive the first Lise Meitner Prize, presented by the Physics Center, a joint umbrella organization for the physics departments of Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University in Sweden.  The prize, to be presented annually, is awarded to Ramond for his pioneering contributions to Superstring Theory.

Hirschman Prize Awarded

The Albert O. Hirschman Prize, presented by the Social Science Research Council, honors scholars who bridge the worlds of development economics and policy making in the tradition of influential American economist Albert O. Hirschman, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study.  Established this year, the prize will be awarded annually to a single recipient.

This year's winner is Dani Rodrik, the Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.  Rodik has published widely in the areas of economic development, international economics, and political economy. 

The Carnegie-IAS Commission on Mathematics and Science Education Established

Vartan Gregorian, President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, and Phillip Griffiths, Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study, have announced the creation of a joint commission to address the continuing concern that America's education systems are not providing the level of instruction in science, mathematics, and technology needed in today's global economy.  The Commission comprises a mix of knowledgeable, distinguished individuals representing government, academia, industry, cultural organizations, and educators, expects that their findings will be relevant to federal, state and local officials, university and faculty administrators, and leaders of the business and philanthropic communities.  In offering its recommendations, the Commission will emphasize practical, incremental changes-often improving upon what is already working - rather than suggesting wholesale, system-wide reform.  Read more here.

Humboldt University Awards Honorary Degree to Peter Paret 

Peter Paret, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has been awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Philosophy by the Humboldt University, Berlin.  The diploma will be presented at a ceremony at the University on December 13, followed by a lecture in which Professor Paret discusses his current work on art and ideology from the Second German Empire to the Third Reich.

Eric Maskin Shares Erik Kempe Award

The European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists have presented the 2007 Erik Kempe Award to Partha Dasgupta and Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the School of Social Science , for their article, "Uncertainty and Hyperbolic Discounting", published in American Economic Review, 95(4), pp. 1290-1299, 2005.   The prize is awarded biannually to the best paper in the field of environmental and resource economics, published in a refereed journal by an author affiliated to a European research institution (in the case of joint papers, at least one author must be affiliated to a European institution).  An international jury of three members awards the prize, and in making their selection, they noted, "Dasgupta and Maskin provide an evolutionary explanation for hyperbolic discounting based on uncertainty over when in the future the impacts of alternative actions are going to be realized. Although the behaviour predicted is dynamically consistent, it appears inconsistent. The authors show that the optimal decision means being relatively patient when the time horizon is long and impatient when the horizon grows short. Though the precise implications of this for social discounting remain for exploration, this paper ­ written by two of the pre-eminent economists of our generation, and appearing in the world's leading economic journal -- seems to offer an important foundation for attaching higher weights to the distant future than standard exponential discounting would suggest."  For more from Umeå University about Professor Maskin and the prize, please click here.

Lakhdar Brahimi Named to "The Elders" 

Lakhdar Brahimi, former Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and a Director's Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study, has been named a member of "The Elders," a group created at the initiative of Nelson Mandela and his wife Gracia Machel.  The group is chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and is made up of an elite group of senior statesmen, including former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson, who are dedicated to solving thorny global problems.  

Glen Bowersock Named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters

Glen W. Bowersock, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has been named a Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters).  According to the Minister of Culture, this order is one of four ministerial orders of the French Republic and consequently one of its principal honorific distinctions, and it is meant to honor persons who have "...distinguished themselves through their creations in the artistic or literary realm, or by the contribution they have brought to the spread of culture in France and in the world."  Past recipients associated with the Institute include current School of Historical Studies Professor Yve-Alain Bois, and the late art historian Kirk Varnedoe, who was also a Professor in the School.

Professor Bowersock is an authority on Greek, Roman, and Near Eastern history and culture as well as the classical tradition in modern literature. His research interests include the Greek East in the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity as well as pre-Islamic Arabia. He is the author of many books, including Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (1969), Julian the Apostate (1978), Roman Arabia (1983), Hellenism in Late Antiquity (1990) and Fiction as History (1994).  His latest books are Mosaics as History (2006), Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (2007), and Saggi sulla tradizione classica dal Settecento al Novecento (Essays on the Classical Tradition from the 18th to the 20th centuries, 2007).

This distinction marks the second time that Professor Bowersock has been honored by the French Government.  In 2004, he was named a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honor).

School of Natural Sciences Members Published in Physical Review Letters

Two Members in the School of Natural Sciences, Simeon Hellerman and Ian Swanson, who is the Marvin L. Goldberger Member, had their paper, "Charting the Landscape of Supercritical String Theory," published in the October 26 issue of the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters, Vol. 99, No. 17.  An online abstract of the article may be viewed here.

Summer 2007 

American Academy of Religion Recognizes Caroline Walker Bynum

The American Academy of Religion's 2007 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion was presented to Carolyn Walker Bynum, Professor in the School of Historical Studies for her book Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).  She received the award in the "Historical Studies" category.  This is the second time Professor Bynum has won the AAR Award for Excellence, having first received it in 1992 in the "Critical-Analytical" category for Fragmentation and Redemption (Zone Boons, 1992).

Avishai Margalit Awarded 2007 EMET Prize

The A.M.N. Foundation for the Advancement of Science, Art and Culture in Israel has recently awarded Avishai Margalit, George Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies, the 2007 EMET Prize in the humanities (philosophy).  The EMET Prize is awarded annually in five fields for excellence in academic and professional achievements that have far-reaching influence and significant contribution to society.  The winners are chosen by the EMET Prize Award Committee, headed by Israeli Supreme Court Justice (Ret.) Gabriel Bach.

Science Foundation Honors Long-term Member

Martin Schnabl, long-term Member in the School of Natural Sciences, has won the EURYI Award, administered by the European Science Foundation and the European Heads of Research Councils, to help him “build on five years of hard work culminating in the solution of an equation in string field theory that had gone unsolved for 20 years.”  The EURYI Award is designed to attract outstanding young scientists from around the world to create their own research teams at European research centers and launch potential world-leading research careers, with awards comparable in size to the Nobel Prize, according to the Foundation.

Academic Year 2006-2007

Academy Fellowships Announced

Two Faculty members at the Institute for Advanced Study have been named Fellows of prominent American academies.  Pierre Deligne, Professor in the School of Mathematics, was among 18 named as foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences for his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.  The National Academy of Sciences is a private organization of scientists and engineers dedicated to the furtherance of science and its use for the general welfare.  It was established in 1863 by a congressional act of incorporation signed by Abraham Lincoln that calls on the Academy to act as an official adviser to the federal government, upon request, in any matter of science or technology.  Foreign associates are nonvoting members of the Academy, with citizenship outside the United States.  Juan Maldacena, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, has been named a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, alongside such luminaries as former Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. and former Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.  Fellows and Foreign Honorary Members are nominated and elected to the Academy by current members. A broad-based membership, comprised of scholars and practitioners from mathematics, physics, biological sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts, public affairs and business, gives the Academy a unique capacity to conduct a wide range of interdisciplinary studies and public policy research.

Institute Trustee Visits Space Station

Trustee Charles Simonyi launched into space on April 7 onboard Soyuz TMA-10 en route to the International Space Station (ISS). During his eight-day stay aboard the ISS, he completed 160 orbits of the Earth and covered 4 million miles, and assisted several international space agencies in conducting experiments. Dr. Simonyi returned to Earth on April 21, landing in Kazakhstan.  As part of his preparations for the mission, Dr. Simonyi trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. Photos and information about Dr. Simonyi's training and flight can be found on his website www.charlesinspace.com. While aboard the ISS, he wore the IAS seal on the right sleeve of his flight suit.

Segregation: Society as a Liquid or a Solid

A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) written by Dejan Vinković , a physicist and former Member in the School of Natural Sciences (2003-06) and current Visitor in the Program for Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, and Alan Kirman, an economist from GREQAM, EHESS, Université d'Aix-Marseille and a former Member in the School of Social Science (2005), brings a new insight into the Schelling model of socioeconomic segregation in society.  In this study, the team presents a mathematical link between Schelling's model and models used for solving the physical problem of surface tension force in liquids and solids. 

They show that models of segregation in society are mathematically equivalent to models used for analyzing the physics of liquid or solid surface tension force.

Faculty Books 

		In The Politics of the Veil (Princeton University Press, 2007) JOAN WALLACH SCOTT, Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science, examines the 2004 ban by the French government of "conspicuous signs" of religious affiliation in public schools.  Though it applies to everyone, the ban is primarily aimed at Muslim girls wearing headscarves.  Scott argues that the law is symptomatic of France's failure to integrate its former colonial subjects as full citizens.
		In Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (Harvard University Press, 2006) GLEN W. BOWERSOCK, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, considers the mosaics that have been uncovered in the Near East during the past century as a critical part of the documentation of the region's ancient culture, finding in them historical evidence, illustrations of literary and mythological tradition, religious icons, monuments to civic pride, and a complex fusion of cultures and religions that speak across time.
		In Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), CAROLINE WALKER BYNUM, Professor of Medieval History in the School of Historical Studies, explores how and why Christ's blood as both object and symbol was central to late medieval art, literature, and religious life.
		In The Diary of a Manchu Soldier in Seventeenth-Century China (RoutledgeCurzon, 2006), NICOLA DI COSMO, Luce Foundation Professor in East Asian Studies, provides an annotated translation of the only known military diary in pre-modern Chinese history. The diary of Dzengseo, a young Manchu officer who recounts the events of the War of the Three Feudatories (1673-1682), offers a rare window into the overall organization of the Qing army, and new data in key areas of military history such as combat, armament, logistics, rank relations, and military culture.
		A second, revised and enlarged edition of Athènes hellénistique.  Histoire de la cité d'Alexandre le Grand à Marc Antoine (Les Belles Lettres, 2006) by CHRISTIAN HABICHT, Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies, has been published. The Hellenistic Monarchies.  Selected Papers (The University of Michigan Press, 2006) by  Habicht, translated by Peregrine Stevenson, makes use of the latest epigraphical evidence from newly found inscriptions to produce a volume of new, newly translated, and republished selections that document the elements of government among the major Hellenistic monarchies.
		Motivic Homotopy Theory (Springer-Verlag, 2007) is based on lectures given on motivic homotopy theory at the Sophus Lie Centre in Nordfjordeid, Norway, in August 2002. Co-author VLADIMIR VOEVODSKY, Professor in the School of Mathematics, is one of the founders of the theory and received the Fields Medal for his work. Lecture Notes on Motivic Cohomology (American Mathematical Society, 2006) is drawn from one-hour lectures given by Voevodsky during the course he gave on motivic cohomology at the Institute in 1999-2000.
		The Scientist as Rebel (New York Review Books, 2006) is a collection of 33 previously published book reviews, essays, and speeches by Freeman J. Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, whom the New York Times has called "one of science's most eloquent interpreters."