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Institute Instances

Institute Instances is a collection of 1–2 minute video snapshots of scholars, administrators, and visitors to the Institute for Advanced Study answering a question (or two) about their work at IAS. Viewed individually, these clips allow audiences to get to know the people who are, in the words of founding IAS Director Abraham Flexner, "pushing beyond the present limits of human knowledge" through advancements in science and the humanities. Taken together, these "instances" of Institute life are designed to show how everyone can play a role in actualizing discovery, and to celebrate a community devoted to excellence in scholarship.

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A Window into Early Twentieth-Century Arabic Manuscripts Transactions

By Garrett Davidson, Rana Mikati and Sabine Schmidtke

A cooperation between the American University in Cairo (AUC) and five academic institutions, including the Institute for Advanced Study, has seen a rare archive documenting the al-Khanji family's cultural impact on early twentieth-century Cairo transferred to AUC. The unique collection, consisting of thousands of documents, reveals the family's significant role in the trade and publishing of manuscripts, offering unprecedented insights into the intellectual networks of the time.

Press Release

Astrophysicists Use Echoes of Light to Illuminate Black Holes

Frank and Peggy Taplin Member George N. Wong, Visitor Lia Medeiros, and Professor James Stone, all from the Institute's School of Natural Sciences, have developed an innovative technique to search for black hole light echoes. Their novel method, which will make it easier for the mass and the spin of black holes to be measured, represents a major step forward, since it operates independently of many of the other ways in which scientists have probed these parameters in the past.