Institute for Advanced Study

Today

Nima Arkani-Hamed on the End of Spacetime

June 20, 2018

Watch Professor Nima Arkani-Hamed discuss the union of quantum mechanics and gravity, prospects for spacetime, and what a new picture for the universe may look like in a lecture given at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Ideas

IAS Founders on America and Higher Learning

“We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex.”

Press Release

2018–19 Summer Program in Social Science

June 14, 2018

Developed by Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor, the Summer Program in Social Science aims to enrich and expand the realm of social sciences through the confrontation of different intellectual traditions and perspectives and to strengthen international networks across continents.

In the Media

Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’

June 15, 2018

Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights lawyer and former Visitor in the School of Social Science, talks to the New York Times about China's influence in the West and the rising threat to international freedom and democracy.

In the Media

Travels Through Wormholes With Juan Maldacena

June 12, 2018

Watch an interview with Professor Juan Maldacena on string theory, wormholes, fashion in physics, and more.

Video

On Deep Learning and Cognition

By Christopher Manning

In many fields, including computational linguistics, deep learning approaches have largely displaced earlier machine learning approaches, due to the superior performance they provide.

In the Media

There Are No Laws of Physics. There’s Only the Landscape.

June 04, 2018

Why are there six “flavors” of quarks, three “generations” of neutrinos, and one Higgs particle? Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, explores the complex search for a single description of reality.

Ideas

Nader Shah in Iranian Historiography

By Rudolph Matthee

Was Iranian ruler Nader Shah a ruthless warlord or a national hero? His reception in eighteenth-century Europe was as swift and dramatic as it was complex. The image it created—half brutal strongman, half national liberator—would significantly contribute to the image modern Iranians would construct of him.

In the Media

Do Our Questions Create the World?

June 06, 2018

Scientific American profiles John Archibald Wheeler, former Member in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences, and his “it from bit” hypothesis, which anticipated ongoing speculation that consciousness is fundamental to reality.

IAS News

School of Social Science Releases Four Occasional Papers in Ongoing Series

June 18, 2018

A project of the School of Social Science, the Occasional Papers are versions of talks given at the School’s weekly seminar where Members present works-in-progress and take questions during lively conversation and debate.

Faculty and Members

“It’s remarkable that we know anything about antiquity. And therefore every tiny fragment of information we have is important, and we milk whatever we have for what it’s worth.”