Physics

Brain Pickings' Maria Popova describes a moment of creative breakthrough from Professor Emeritus Freeman Dyson's Maker of Patterns (Liveright, 2018):

“Suddenly, in what Dyson terms a 'flash of illumination on the Greyhound bus,' everything fell into...

Nima Arkani-Hamed, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, delivered the public lecture “The End of Spacetime” at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, CA, on June 19.

Watch Arkani-Hamed discuss the union of quantum mechanics and...

Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, sat down with Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society for a conversation about Dyson Spheres, black holes, gravitational waves, and more, saying:

"The universe is just full of things we...

"My goal is that by understanding the interior of the black hole we understand the universe to be like a cosmology: because the interior of the black hole is like a collapsing universe and by understanding that, we can perhaps be able to understand...

Scientific American's John Horgan profiles John Archibald Wheeler, a leading theoretical physicist of the twentieth century and former Member in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences, writing:

“He has spent his career racing ahead of other...

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.

Jeremy Bernstein, Member in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences from 1957–1959, gives a personal account of his time at the Institute, third IAS Director J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom he calls a "man of fashion in physics," and the field of...

Nautilus presents short excerpts from nine of Freeman Dyson’s letters taken from his new book Maker of Patterns, with a focus on his relationship with the physicist Richard Feynman. Dyson and Feynman had both professional and personal bonds: Dyson...

Kai Bird of the New York Times reviews Professor Emeritus Freeman Dyson's Maker of Patterns: An Autobiography Through Letters (Liveright, 2018), writing:

"He knew Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger and, well, just about anyone worth...

Juan Maldacena, Carl P. Feinberg Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, and Member Douglas Stanford will give the public lecture “The Cool Alter-Ego of a Black Hole,” on Friday, May 4, which will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on...