Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

On May 20, 2022, IAS celebrated Founders Day in recognition of  Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld, the brother and sister who founded and endowed IAS on May 20, 1930. The event was held on campus, beginning with a toast led by Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg.

Bret Stephens of the New York Times celebrates Founding Director Abraham Flexner's seminal essay The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, citing recent NASA missions including New Horizons, OSIRIS-REx, and InSight as examples of the kind of curiosity...

“Our whole education is a process of confrontation between our imagination and the reality of established facts,” Institute Director and Leon Levy Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf tells the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. “I think the greatest scientists have such an intense curiosity that they’re not discouraged by the current practice of the field and they push the boundaries of knowledge.”

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge by Director Robbert Dijkgraaf and IAS founding Director Abraham Flexner “read in the right government places, might inoculate the nation against philistine utilitarianism,” observes Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist George F. Will in the Washington Post.

IAS Faculty, Trustees, and Members participated in ICTS at Ten, a gathering to celebrate the unity of science, on January 4–7, at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences campus in Bengaluru, India.

The event featured half-hour talks by IAS...

IAS Faculty, Trustees, and Members will participate in ICTS at Ten, a gathering to celebrate the unity of science, which takes place January 4–7, at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences campus in Bengaluru, India.

The event features half...

On December 9, the world's leading scientists, experts, and opinion leaders will gather in Gothenberg, Sweden, for thought-provoking conversations on the future of truth as part of the 2017 Nobel Week Dialogue. Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon...

Charles Kolb, a Senior Public Policy Executive and contributor for Huffington Post, writes of the realities of waning American innovation and productivity, along with the great decline of basic research funding. With reference to the Usefulness of...

John Ewing, President of Math for America, writes in the Huffington Post:

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge was recently republished along with a companion essay, The World of Tomorrow by Robbert Dijkgraaf, the current director of the Institute...

“Perhaps the biggest fact of the last three hundred years of history is that life expectancy tripled in the West and in many other parts of the world. But it's not connected to one discovery or one battle being fought—it is a tremendous driver and...