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Press Release

Karen Uhlenbeck Awarded 2019 Abel Prize

March 19, 2019

The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters has awarded the 2019 Abel Prize to Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck whose affiliation with the Institute for Advanced Study spans four decades, as a current Visitor in the School of Mathematics and a former Member and Visiting Professor in the School. 

In the Media

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Karen Uhlenbeck Is First Woman to Receive Abel Prize in Mathematics

March 19, 2019

In the New York Times, Kenneth Chang writes: "One of Dr. Uhlenbeck’s advances in essence described the complex shapes of soap films not in a bubble bath but in abstract, high-dimensional curved spaces. In later work, she helped put a rigorous mathematical underpinning to techniques widely used by physicists in quantum field theory to describe fundamental interactions between particles and forces."

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

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Soap-Bubble Pioneer Is First Woman to Win Prestigious Maths Prize

March 19, 2019

"She has been an enormous role model and mentor for many generations of women," Caroline Series, President of the London Mathematical Society, tells Nature's Davide Castelvecchi, who writes that 2019 Abel Prize Laureate Karen Uhlenbeck, co-founder of the Institute's Women and Mathematics program, "has been a relentless advocate for women in mathematics."

Video

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Emmy Noether’s Contribution to Physics

By Karen Uhlenbeck

In 1990, Karen Uhlenbeck became the second woman to give a Plenary Lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians. In this lecture, Uhlenbeck explores the influence of Emmy Noether, one of the first Visitors at the Institute from 1933–35, and the first woman to deliver a Plenary Lecture in 1932.

In the Media

Karen Uhlenbeck Interview with Celebratio Mathematica

December 01, 2018

In an interview with Allyn Jackson for Celebratio Mathematica, Karen Uhlenbeck, 2019 Abel Prize Laureate and Visitor in the School of Mathematics, speaks on the interchange of ideas within mathematics, gauge theory, the Women and Mathematics program at IAS, and much more. 

In the Media

An Improbable Movement? Macron's France and the Rise of the Gilets Jaunes

March 01, 2019

How could a leaderless grassroots movement, involving often quite small groups of protestors, monopolize the news, capture the attention of the wider world, and destabilize a government that had swept to power in a landslide victory in 2017? Didier Fassin and Anne-Claire Defossez explore this question in a new article for New Left Review. 

In the Media

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To Understand China, Look to America’s History

March 19, 2019

In the Wall Street Journal, Katherine Epstein, Member in the School of Historical Studies, turns to history to analyze U.S. hand-wringing over the global telecommunications threat posed by Chinese manufacturing giant Huawei.

In the Media

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Nima Arkani-Hamed Interview with CERN Courier

March 11, 2019

“The world has all kinds of long-term problems, some of which might seem impossible to solve. So it’s important to have a group of people who, over centuries, give a concrete template for how to go about grappling with and ultimately conquering seemingly impossible problems, driven by a calling far larger than themselves.” —Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences

Ideas

The Promise and Peril of Credit

By Francesca Trivellato

Even those who believe in the positive effects of expanding private and public credit, now as in the past, cannot easily agree on where to draw the boundaries of that expansion and what kind of oversight might best prevent fraud and the emergence of oligopolies.

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.

Kathleen Coleman in A Child Prodigy in Ancient Rome

Myself and Edward and others at the IAS are studying the interactions of anyons, how to describe them theoretically, and how to produce them out of ordinary matter.

Clay Cordova in Topology and Physics

Langlands showed how the same formula can originate from two entirely different worlds of thought. To employ another metaphor: it is as if two chefs cooking with two entirely different recipes, ingredients, and methods of preparation, produce exactly the same dish.

Robbert Dijkgraaf in A Mathematical Rosetta Stone

A naturalized belief in the necessary and immutable difference of the sexes provides legitimation for the organization of other social and political inequalities; in turn the legitimation invoked by politics, establishes the immutability of biology. 

Joan Wallach Scott in The Persistence of Gender Inequality