Ideas

One of the surprising things about chaos is that it took so long for physicists to appreciate how common it is. This is despite the fact that people seem to come naturally programmed with intuition for the basic phenomenon: that small changes to...

Natural Sciences

The Magic of Light and Color

By Robbert Dijkgraaf

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, explores the magic of light and color in this Science Talk for Families event.

Natural Sciences

The Most Wanted Man in China

By Li-Zhi Fang

The Institute Letter Summer 2016

When Fang Lizhi, one of China’s most distinguished scientists, began in 1986 to talk to his students about the “universal rights” of human beings, he knew the risks. In those days, the use of the term “rights” in China was highly sensitive,...

Natural Sciences

NatiFest: Celebrating the Science of Nathan Seiberg

In 2016, Professor Nathan Seiberg celebrates his sixtieth birthday and reaches his twentieth year as a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. The conference celebrating these occasions was...

Natural Sciences

Videos from Prospects in Theoretical Physics 2016

Prospects in Theoretical Physics is an intensive two-week summer program typically designed for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars considering a career in theoretical physics. First held by the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute...

Natural Sciences

The Astrophysics Behind LIGO’s Detection

By Doron Kushnir

The Institute Letter Summer 2016

On September 14, 2015, the two detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) observed a gravitational-wave signal from the merger of a pair of black holes. While this impressive technological triumph was celebrated...

Natural Sciences

Unfashionable Pursuits, Leaps in the Dark, and Detecting Gravitational Waves

By Freeman J. Dyson

The Institute Letter Spring 2016

The Institute sometimes spends money on risky ventures, giving sustained support to people who work on unfashionable and dubious projects. One example of a risky venture was Einstein, who worked here for twenty years on unified field theories...

Natural Sciences

Cosmic Calorimetry or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hydrogen

By Juna Kollmeier

The Institute Letter Spring 2016

The next time you are enjoying the sun’s warm rays, think of the tremendous voyage those photons have taken to get to you. Traveling, by definition, at the speed of light they left their point of origin about eight minutes previously in a furious...

Natural Sciences

A Physicist’s Perspective on the Iran Deal

By Eli Waxman

On July 14, 2015, the P5+1 group of world powers and Iran signed a comprehensive nuclear agreement, aiming to limit Iran’s ability to advance its nuclear program towards achieving nuclear weapons. Eli Waxman, Professor at the Weizmann Institute...

Natural Sciences

A New Era of Gravitational-Wave Astronomy

Matias Zaldarriaga, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, Scott Tremaine, Richard Black Professor in the School, Member Doron Kushnir, and Junior Visiting Professor Nadia Zakamska discuss LIGO's recent detection of gravitational waves,...

Mathematics

Dynamics on the Moduli Spaces of Curves

By Maryam Mirzakhani

The Institute is deeply saddened by the passing of Fields Medalist Maryam Mirzakhani, former Member in the School of Mathematics (2015), seen here giving the first of three 2012 Marston Morse Lectures.

Mathematics

My Search for Ramanujan

By Ken Ono

My decision to search for Ramanujan the mathematician would mean going a bit more distance out of my way. I wanted to increase my knowledge, and that would slow down my publication rate, something that anyone trying to land a permanent job must take into account. The Institute’s offer was therefore a godsend. I could concentrate on my mathematics in an environment free of other distractions and responsibilities, and I would be able to learn from some of the world’s most brilliant and talented mathematicians.

The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge

By Robbert Dijkgraaf

Abraham Flexner’s perspective on the “usefulness of useless knowledge” has only gained in substance and breadth since his time. Fundamental inquiry moves exploration as far up to the headwaters as possible, producing ideas that slowly and steadily turn into concrete applications and further studies.

IAS Founders on America and Higher Learning

We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions as to personnel other than those designed to promote the objects for which this institution is established, and particularly with no regard whatever to accidents of race, creed, or sex.

IAS’s Founding Ethos in Our Precarious Present

By History Working Group

Global political forces in power from Turkey to the United States are posing serious threats to the autonomy of scientific research and the mobility of researchers, undercutting two cardinal conditions for scientific progress. Walls, fences, bans, blocks, restrictions, cuts, and expulsions are slowly becoming run-of-the-mill terms for us to navigate in an increasingly precarious political landscape.

Emmy Noether’s Paradise

By History Working Group

To Albert Einstein, she was “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher education of women began.” More straightforward in his praise, Einstein’s fellow Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hermann Wey l, called her a “great woman mathematician […indeed] the greatest that history has known.” Her name was Emmy Noether, and her short but remarkable life left an indelible mark not only on the history of mathematics, but also on that of IAS in its critical first years.

Einstein, Plumbers, and McCarthyism

By History Working Group

Einstein’s actions did not by themselves cause McCarthy’s downfall. But they certainly facilitated it, by reaffirming essential principles that date back to the Enlightenment, and by empowering many others to keep up the continuing fight to protect democracy.

A Scholar’s Paradise, in the World

By History Working Group

In 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study was created as an academic retreat for the pursuit of daring research, unfettered by material constraints. From the beginning, political turmoil around the world interfered with this dream. This exhibit traces key moments in this history, focusing on questions of displacement and academic freedom in Europe, the United States, and Latin America from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Historical Studies

Glen Bowersock on Intolerance

We are a nation shaped by immigrants, as the Statue of Liberty reminds us, but now, horrifyingly, immigrants are increasingly subjected to prejudice for both their ethnic identity and their religion.

Historical Studies

The Zaydi Manuscript Tradition

By Sabine Schmidtke

The Yemeni manuscript collections constitute a unique treasure trove for large segments of the Islamic intellectual tradition—Sunni as well as Shii—much of which has not survived anywhere else in the Islamic world.

Historical Studies

The Chief Eunuch of the Ottoman Imperial Harem

By Jane Hathaway

The Chief Harem Eunuch’s influence extended beyond palace politics and the holy cities.

Historical Studies

Editing the Qurʾān in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Europe

By Roberto Tottoli

Newly discovered manuscripts reveal the arduous, and often ill-fated, efforts by scholars, typographers, and traders to print the Qurʾān.

Historical Studies

Muʿtazilism in Islam and Judaism

By Sabine Schmidtke

The scholarly investigation of the Jewish Muʿtazila, its historical connection to Muslim counterparts, and a systematic exploitation of the Islamic primary materials preserved in Jewish collections, are still in their infancy.

Historical Studies

A World of Emotions: The Making of an Exhibition

By Angelos Chaniotis

What are the means through which ancient artists represented the emotions of gods, mythical heroes, and “real” people? How were images and texts exploited to arouse emotions in an ancient (and modern) audience?

Social Science

Kristen Ghodsee on Democratic Ideals and Global Rhetoric

Reducing all leftist ideals to Stalinism and calling anyone who questions the long-term sustainability or desirability of global capitalism a communist, I believe, is an intentional rhetorical strategy of the political and economic elite who have the most to lose from any challenge to the current status quo.

Natural Sciences

Black Holes and the Butterfly Effect

By Douglas Stanford

Natural Sciences

Entanglement and the Geometry of Spacetime

By Juan Maldacena

When one considers black holes as quantum mechanical objects, an important feature arises: "entangled" microstates. Can entanglement give rise to wormholes connecting far away regions in space?

Natural Sciences

The Advent and Fallout of EPR

By Kelly Devine Thomas

An IAS teatime conversation in 1935 between Nathan Rosen, Boris Podolsky, and Albert Einstein, about a fundamental issue of interpretation related to entangled wave-functions, introduced an ongoing debate over quantum physics.

Historical Studies

In Search of an Identity

By Angelos Chaniotis

There is no such thing as a homogeneous European culture, with which the Bosnian Muslims, the third-generation Turks in Germany, the Greeks, the Roma, the French Jews, the Basques, and the Laps––not to mention the Indians and Pakistanis living in London––can identify themselves.

Mathematics

Claude Shannon: Father of the Information Age

By Sergio Verdú

Former Member Claude Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication” created the field of information theory in 1948. Beyond its impact on communications technology, Shannon’s work has had tremendous impact on computer science and engineering, artificial intelligence, and probability and statistics.

Fall at the Institute

By Erika Michael

In the ambient flow of Fuld Hall Commons at Tea —the gathered minds’ ruminations on lapsed and present time glowed like past light striking one flame

Imposter Syndrome

By Dan Burt

An hour south of Wall Street, past tulips, toddlers on swings, cyclists, runners, Frisbees tossed by girls in shimmering orange shorts, I walk to the Institute library to borrow the Shorter O.E.D.

Historical Studies

How to Handle a Mummy

Jacco Dieleman

When I was still a graduate student, I came across a remarkable manuscript: two sheets of papyrus inscribed with careless cursive Egyptian, in narrow, wobbly columns, in black ink. It was inscribed in two forms of Egyptian cursive: hieratic and demotic. In Ancient Egypt, these script varieties were usually kept apart.

Historical Studies

Jonathan Haslam on Global Political Change

Such an unanticipated change in government in the United States for all its undoubted strength cannot, of course, alter overnight the entire course of international relations.

Natural Sciences

The Most Wanted Man in China

By Li-Zhi Fang

As of 1985 it was still not entirely safe to write about cosmology. In May of that year, I published an article in the Chinese journal Science in which I introduced quantum cosmology and referred in passing to the view that “the universe arose from nothing.”

Social Science

Preventing Cervical Cancer

By Donald W Light

We will not know for years how effectively HPV vaccines actually prevent cervical and related cancers — however, prices can be much lower and still profitable for countries where most of the cancer, hospitalizations, and deaths occur.

Social Science

Women in French Politics

By Anne-Claire Defossez

It is indeed the case that, after centuries of political ostracism, women have recently become more present in French political life . . . but the presence of a few prominent female figures and seemingly favorable statistics do not tell the whole story.

Mathematics

The Work of Robert Langlands

Explore a collection of Robert Langlands’s papers, as well as some of his lectures and correspondence, on topics ranging from functoriality, representation theory, and Shimura varieties to endoscopy, percolation, and geometric theory.

Mathematics

Robert Langlands: Far-Reaching Mathematics

By Kelly Devine Thomas

Robert Langlands grew up in a small town in British Columbia where his father owned a building supply store. “When I was a child I liked to add and subtract,” says Langlands. “In our store, my mother worked. And I remember competing with her. We would tally lumber; she would do it on the adding machine and I would do it in my head.”

Mathematics

Analysis and Beyond

Talks celebrating Jean Bourgain and the exceptional range, depth, and power of his mathematical work

Mathematics

A Celebration of Mathematics and Computer Science

Videos of talks by mathematicians celebrating Professor Avi Wigderson's work, impact, and collaborations

Mathematics

Randomness and Pseudorandomness

By Avi Wigderson

The notion of randomness has intrigued people for millennia. Concepts like “chance,” “luck,” etc., play a major role in everyday life and in popular culture. In this article, I try to be precise about the meaning and utility of randomness and pseudorandomness.