The Institute Letter Fall 2018

Includes a variety of articles by Faculty and Members exploring deep learning and computation, black holes and quantum information, the anthropology of life and the politics of gender, the porous boundaries between science and culture, the topology of locally symmetric spaces, and the queer beginnings of Mormonism.

Click here to view the PDF.

Press Release

Cross-Discipline Analysis of Ancient Cemeteries Sheds Light on Sixth-Century Barbarians

September 11, 2018

Applying a comprehensive analysis of genetic, historical, and archaeological factors in two 6th-century barbarian cemeteries, researchers have gleaned new insights into a key era known as the Migration Period that laid the foundation for modern...

Press Release

Christian Habicht (1926–2018), Acclaimed Historian and Leading Expert on the Hellenistic Period, Dies at 92

August 07, 2018

Christian Habicht, a celebrated historian of the Hellenistic period and leading authority on Greek epigraphy, died at the age of 92 on the morning of August 6, 2018, in Princeton, New Jersey. He was Professor Emeritus in the School of Historical...

Press Release

Professor Akshay Venkatesh Awarded Fields Medal

August 01, 2018

The International Mathematical Union (IMU) has awarded a 2018 Fields Medal to Akshay Venkatesh, a world-leading mathematician recently appointed to the permanent Faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) School of Mathematics. This highest...

Social Science

The Will to Punish

By Didier Fassin

Recently, societies have become more repressive, their laws more relentless, their magistrates more inflexible, independently of the evolution of crime. In this book, using genealogical and ethnographic approaches, anthropologist Didier Fassin...

Mathematics

A Mathematical Rosetta Stone

By Robbert Dijkgraaf

Writing for NRC Handelsblad, Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, likens IAS Professor and Abel Prize Laureate Robert Langlands’s program, “a deep connection between two completely different parts of mathematics: on the one hand, numbers and their relations, on the other hand, geometrical patterns and their symmetries,” to a mathematical Rosetta Stone.

Press Release

Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck Appointed to Board of Trustees

May 15, 2018

The Institute for Advanced Study has appointed Dutch astronomer and chemist Ewine Fleur van Dishoeck to its Board of Trustees, effective May 5, 2018. Van Dishoeck is Professor of Molecular Astrophysics at the University of Leiden, External...

Press Release

Historian of Science Myles W. Jackson Appointed to Faculty

May 15, 2018

Myles W. Jackson, an internationally renowned historian of science whose breadth of research extends from molecular biology and physics to intellectual property and privacy issues, has been appointed to the Faculty of the School of Historical...

Press Release

NEH Grant to Support Zaydi Manuscript Tradition Project

May 03, 2018

The School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study has received a $315,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the Zaydi Manuscript Tradition initiative, led by Sabine Schmidtke, Professor in the School...