Ideas

In welcome remarks delivered to the 2025–26 class of IAS scholars, Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg reflected on the Institute’s role as "a special place" dedicated to discovery. He emphasized how the Institute's history, culture of solitude and community, and spirit of dialogue create an environment where scholars can push the boundaries of knowledge.

In 2025, the Institute's Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center made a remarkable array of new acquisitions—gifts and transfers that represent a cross-section of the four IAS Schools as well as a wide spectrum of the scholarly community. The collections preserve stories of the scholars who have shaped the Institute’s legacy and, by extension, the world of ideas.

In a recent exhibition, Sofía Torallas Tovar, Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Historical Studies, and co-curator Raquel Martín Hernández explored an extraordinary papyrus codex whose pages are now dispersed across the globe. It offers a rare window into the production and circulation of biblical texts in Roman Egypt. 

Rahul Ilango, Member in the School of Mathematics, studies computational complexity theory, which quantifies the amount of resources—like time and hardware—needed to solve computational tasks. Ilango has a particular interest in problems that bridge complexity theory with other fields, such as cryptography and proof complexity. 

Nadine Soliman, NASA Hubble Fellow in the School of Natural Sciences, studies star and planet formation. At IAS, she’ll examine and simulate processes such as the collapse of molecular clouds, the birth of stellar clusters, and the formation of protoplanetary disks—all as case studies for larger questions about the interplay between microphysical processes and large-scale astrophysical structures.

Zeynep Çelik Alexander, Hans Kohn Member in the School of Historical Studies, studies the history and theory of architecture since the Enlightenment. Her current work examines institutions in Victorian London in which information collected from around the British empire was aggregated and organized to serve imperialist ends in the second half of the nineteenth century. 

Corey Robin, Member in the School of Social Science, is a political theorist and journalist whose scholarship addresses a range of topics across modern economic and political thought, from the role of fear in the Western imagination to the black nationalist roots of Justice Clarence Thomas’s jurisprudence. He has published landmark work on the history of conservatism, including The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump. 

Federico Ardila, Friends of the Institute for Advanced Study Member in the School of Mathematics (2024–25), describes mathematics as a deeply human, emotional, and collaborative pursuit. He shares how working alongside world experts at IAS inspires creativity in problem solving, akin to playing soccer with the best in the world.

Yelena Mandelshtam, Member in the Institute for Advanced Study’s School of Mathematics (2024–25), discusses the power of complementary knowledge between mathematics and physics, and how this might drive forward advances in understanding problems such as the KP Equation.

Anna Stirr, Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Member in the School of Historical Studies (2024–25), explores the rich world of Nepali musicology. She also reflects on Institute for Advanced Study’s own unique soundscape, from the distinctive birdsong to the lively atmosphere that fosters deep scholarly exchange.