Institute for Advanced Study

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After Math: Reasoning, Proving, and Computing in the Postwar United States

February 26, 2019 | 5:00pm

In this public lecture, Stephanie Dick of the University of Pennsylvania will introduce different visions of the computer as a mathematical agent; the software that was crafted to animate those imaginings; and the novel practices and materialities of mathematical knowledge-making that emerged in tandem.

Ideas

Founders’ Statement 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.”

In the Media

A Different Kind of Theory of Everything

February 21, 2019

Writing for the New Yorker, Director's Visitor (2017) Natalie Wolchover discusses the puzzles and paradoxes of contemporary science that point to "the need to reformulate the theories of modern physics in a new mathematical language," highlighting the work of Professor in the School of Natural Sciences Nima Arkani-Hamed.

Ideas

Establishing a Theoretical Understanding of Machine Learning

"It's kind of like physics in its formative stages—Newton asking what makes the apple fall down," says Sanjeev Arora, Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics, explaining the current scientific excitement about machine learning.

IAS News

Didier Fassin on "Left Populism"

February 21, 2019

Can a left populism strategy be crafted that would avoid the pitfalls of prior populist experiences? This is the central question explored in a panel, moderated by Bernard E. Harcourt, past Visting Professor in the School of Social Science, with Professor Didier Fassin and past School of Historical Studies Member Jan-Werner Mueller.

Ideas

A Room, an Office, a Library, a World

By Monica H. Green

The Institute is a remarkably modest place. Like all Members, I was provided a lovely apartment, a simple office (with computer), access to libraries, lunch in the dining hall, tea in the afternoon. So how does new knowledge come out of such a simple mix?

Ideas

A Year at the Institute

Explore a visual and narrative look at the pioneering research at the Institute for Advanced Study, a community of international scholars and researchers, in our 2017–18 annual report that highlights the studies, discoveries, and collaborations throughout the year.

Video

Irving Lavin on the Institute for Advanced Study

Professor Irving Lavin (1927–2019) was an art historian distinguished by his conviction that the study of the history of art was the study of the history of ideas. One of the ideas he found most exciting was that of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Ideas

Impressionism and the Modern Temporal Order

By André Dombrowski

How quickening brushwork arose from the industrialization of time

Faculty and Members

In the realm of politics, the value of freedom is collective and enabling. It makes it possible for men and women to join together and claim equal standing. Take political freedom away and equality becomes a lost project.

Michael Walzer on Freedom and Equality

Why does the equation that describes the average motion of water molecules also govern the ripples of spacetime?

Shiraz Minwalla in From Fluid Dynamics to Gravity and Back

The Yemeni manuscript collections constitute a unique treasure trove for large segments of the Islamic intellectual tradition—Sunni as well as Shii—much of which has not survived anywhere else in the Islamic world.

Sabine Schmidtke in The Zaydi Manuscript Tradition