Institute for Advanced Study

Today

A Yemeni man reads the Qur'an at the Great Mosque in the old city of the capital Sana’a.

Zaydi Manuscript Tradition Featured in NEH “Humanities” Magazine

October 23, 2019

"As a scholar, you continue working, no matter what the circumstances—I think it’s a kind of mental freedom that you create for yourself," Sabine Schmidtke, Professor in the School of Historical Studies and director of the Zaydi Manuscript Tradition project, tells Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project has made possible many new discoveries, including among scholars in Yemen itself, despite air raids, famine, and targeted destruction of cultural heritage.

In the Media

Essays in Honor of Natalie Zemon Davis in Celebration of Her 90th Birthday

November 07, 2019

H-France Salon has published a series of tributes in honor of Natalie Zemon Davis, acclaimed early modern historian and former Member (1978) in the School of Social Science, on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday. Presenters included IAS Professors Francesca Trivellato and Joan Wallach Scott and IAS Trustee Lorraine Daston, who gathered to honor Davis's brilliant scholarship and intellectual leadership.

IAS News

Roberto Tottoli smiles at a conference table

Former Member Named Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Fellow

October 31, 2019

Roberto Tottoli, Member (2016–17) and Visitor (2019) in the School of Historical Studies, has been named a fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. While at IAS, Tottoli researched the history of the editing and printing of the Qur’an, especially in Europe, work Tottoli continues on the research team behind the "European Qur’an" project.

Ideas

The Social Life of DNA

By Alondra Nelson

Genetics is today engaged in practices of identity formation, in philanthropy and socioeconomic development projects, as corroborating evidence in civil litigation and historical debates, and elsewhere. Thus, although the therapeutic utility of the genome may be arguable, the social life of DNA is unmistakable: the double helix now lies at the center of some of the most significant issues of our time.

Video

Primes and Knots - Akshay Venkatesh

Primes and Knots

By Akshay Venkatesh

In mathematics, there are many surprising parallels between problems in the theory of numbers and questions in three-dimensional geometry. In "Primes and Knots," a public lecture at the IAS, Akshay Venkatesh, Robert and Luisa Fernholz Professor in the School of Mathematics, explained some of this story, and how it continues to inform research.

Ideas

Arnold Levine converses with several students in a circle

Seventy Years and Two Paradigm Shifts: The Changing Faces of Biology

By Arnold J. Levine

By the 1970s, genes were cloned and isolated and the sequences of the nucleotides revealed the proteins that they made, which could then be expressed and produced in bacteria. Change was coming rapidly but not without fear and objections and hotly contested questioning about the safety of moving genes around into new species. A common question was “What does one learn from all this reductionism without the organism?”

Ideas

From Bewilderment to Clarity

By Suzanne Conklin Akbari

At the Institute, while each School certainly has its own character and researchers’ work is highly specialized, there is nonetheless a sense of common purpose and shared environment. We inhabit the same space—the same woods—and not just in the literal sense. We share the experience of bewilderment, and the perpetual yearning for clarity.

Press Release

Ann-Kristin Achleitner Appointed to Board of Trustees

October 30, 2019

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed economist Ann-Kristin Achleitner to its Board of Trustees. Achleitner is a Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance in the School of Management at the Technical University of Munich.

2020 IAS Einstein Gala

Please join us for the 2020 IAS Einstein Gala honoring Sir James Wolfensohn, IAS’s longest-serving Board Chair. The celebration will be held at 6 p.m. on March 12, 2020, at the Glasshouse, NYC.

In the Media

Cosmic Triangles and the Origin of Time

October 31, 2019

“Paleontologists infer the existence of dinosaurs to give a rational accounting of strange patterns of bones,” said Professor Nima Arkani-Hamed. “We look at patterns in space today, and we infer a cosmological history in order to explain them.” In Quanta Magazine, Natalie Wolchover, IAS Director's Visitor (2017), reports on a detailed paper coauthored over the summer by Arkani-Hamed with Member (2009–11) Daniel Baumann and two collaborators, that "bootstraps" time and treats it as emergent rather than fundamental.

Ideas

The Institute’s Founding Ethos in Our Precarious Present

By History Working Group

Founded in the early years of the Great Depression, IAS took shape during the buildup to the Second World War and under the growing shadow of authoritarian regimes.

IAS News

Hirosi Ooguri Receives Medal of Honor from Emperor of Japan

November 04, 2019

Hirosi Ooguri, former Visiting Professor (2015) and Member (1988–89) in the School of Natural Sciences, has been awarded a Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon, conferred by Japan's Emperor Naruhito on November 3, 2019.

Faculty and Members

After decades of retreat from the mainstream, economic history is making its way back to college curricula and scholarly publications. Today as always, present concerns stimulate academics’ choice of subject matter and approaches to historical inquiry.

Francesca Trivellato in The Promise and Peril of Credit