School of Natural Sciences

Christopher Beem, J. Robert Oppenheimer Visiting Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, is a theoretical physicist and mathematician who specializes in the study of quantum field theories. In this Q&A, he discusses the reciprocal relationship between quantum field theory and pure math, the potential impact of AI in his field, and his return to IAS for a second Membership.

Uddipan Banik, Bezos Member in the School of Natural Sciences (2023–26), breaks down the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) profile, describing how scientists study the gravitational pull of invisible dark matter to understand the behavior and formation of galaxies across the universe.

Andy Mummery, John N. Bahcall Fellow (2025–30) in the School of Natural Sciences, might have had the talent for professional cricket, but fortunately for the field of astrophysics, he didn’t quite have the attention span. During his IAS Membership, he is applying his "wandering curiosity" to understanding tidal disruption events, all while preparing for an impending explosion of new data.

Vera Gluscevic, IBM Einstein Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Natural Sciences (2025–26), explains that every galaxy sits in a vast halo of dark matter—often far more massive than what we can see. She describes how dark matter’s early-universe clumps became the seeds of cosmic structure, forming the galaxies we know today.

Matt Kleban, Member in the School of Natural Sciences (2003–06, 2012–13), recalls how a brief conversation at an AMIAS gathering—with Professor Emeritus in the School, Edward Witten—opened a new line of thinking in his research on string theory. AMIAS, the Association of Members of the Institute for Advanced Study, connects all accepted, current, and former IAS scholars and keeps those chance encounters alive even after a scholar's time at IAS ends.

Stephen L. Adler, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, reflects on the life and legacy of Chen Ning Yang, Professor (1955–66) in the School of Mathematics/Natural Sciences, who passed away in 2025. Adler traces Yang's landmark contributions, emphasizing how these ideas helped shape today’s Standard Model.

In a collaboration born from overlapping terms in the School of Natural Sciences, Elena Murchikova, Member (2018–22) and frequent Visitor, and Kailash Sahu, Member (2022–23), have challenged prevailing assumptions about the visibility of isolated black holes.

Sihao Cheng, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member (2022–25) in the School of Natural Sciences, who led a team to the discovery of a trans-Neptunian object potentially large enough to qualify as a dwarf planet, shares—in his own words—a reflection on how the new object was identified.

What happens when a planet plows through the swirling disk of gas and dust that surrounds a young star? Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study Member Callum W. Fairbairn and NASA Einstein Fellow Alexander Dittmann, both from the School of Natural Sciences, have shed light on this, broadening our understanding of planets on elliptical, or “eccentric,” orbits.

Resolving the deep conflict between the principles of gravity and quantum mechanics—and more generally, developing a theory of “quantum gravity”—is a major open question in theoretical physics. By building on and extending one another’s research, IAS scholars past and present have made substantial progress in this area, generating insights that continue to influence research.