Robbert Dijkgraaf

Light is the great unifier. John Wheeler, the beloved Princeton physicist, used to draw the universe as a big capital U with a little eye on one leg, signifying that we, human beings, are the eyes of the universe looking back at itself. The universe...

Mathematics has proven to be "unreasonably effective" in understanding nature. The fundamental laws of physics can be captured in beautiful formulae. In this lecture, given at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Robbert Dijkgraaf...

What do quantum interference, flocking of birds, Facebook communities, and stock prices have in common?

Many natural and social phenomena may be viewed as inherently computational; they evolve patterns of information that can be described...

How did the universe begin? Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, explains what we know about the Big Bang and explores the mysteries of our universe.

One of the most amazing things we discovered in science is that everything is made of small particles. It's the properties of these molecules, atoms, nuclei, and elementary particles that allow us to answer ­simple questions like: why is grass green...

In 2013, Freeman Dyson celebrated his ninetieth birthday and also marked his sixtieth year as a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. Dreams of Earth and Sky, conceived by Dyson’s colleagues in the School of Natural Sciences, was an...

In 2013, Freeman Dyson celebrated his ninetieth birthday and also marked his sixtieth year as a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, the longest tenure of any Faculty member in the Institute’s history. When Dyson first arrived as a Member...

I should admit at the outset to a guilty conscience. I should have been a physicist (it was my best subject), but around the age of fifteen was converted to the humanities by an enthusiastic English teacher who had been a professional actor. Plato’s...

“It is indeed an endless cycle of imagination and concentration, of divergence and convergence, of playing and thinking that deter­mines the rhythm of science and scholarship,” writes Robbert Dijkgraaf on the occasion of becoming the Institute’s ninth Director and first Leon Levy Professor. “The Institute is devoted to creating and sup­porting these experiences.”

Before dawn on July 4, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new particle consistent with the boson predicted nearly fifty years ago by Peter Higgs. He gave one of his first seminars on his theory at the Institute at the invitation of...