Ideas

The life and work of renowned scientist, visionary, and iconoclast Freeman Dyson, who spent most of his career at the Institute for Advanced Study, is the focus of a new book edited by American physicist and historian of science David Kaiser.

This installment of our "Paths to Math" video series features Patrick Shafto, Member in the Institute’s School of Mathematics and Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science at Rutgers University. Learn how Patrick’s unexpected start studying physical therapy at Northeastern eventually led to his current research, which explores the intersections of human and machine learning.

Verena Krebs is an award-winning medieval historian working on Christian Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. She draws on archaeology, art, and written sources for her scholarship. At IAS, Krebs will work on her second monograph, “Africa Collecting Europe: Patronage and Power in Christian Ethiopia, 1468–1530", which will tease out an untold story about the assertion of power in a pre-colonial African kingdom.

Introducing D. Dominique Kemp, the first Black student to receive a PhD in Mathematics from Indiana University-Bloomington. He joins the IAS School of Mathematics in 2022–2023 to continue his exploration of problems that connect harmonic analysis with geometry. 

Meet 2022–23 Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., and Annette L. Nazareth Member in the School of Social Science, K-Sue Park. Her research examines the development of American property law and the creation of the American real estate market through the histories of colonization and enslavement. 

Sophie Lund Schrøder is a Member in the School of Natural Sciences. She will spend her time at IAS applying numerical methods and analytic modeling to study high-energy astrophysical phenomena, especially evolution of stellar binaries.

Animating the Antique: Sculptural Encounter in the Age of Aesthetic Theory, a pioneering work of eighteenth and nineteenth century art history, has been published by Penn State University Press. Sarah Betzer, a Member and former Visitor (2014–15, 2016) in the School of Historical Studies, wrote the book during her time at the Institute, culminating in the groundbreaking and widely-acclaimed text that spans a century-and-a-half and offers new account of the distinctively modern allure of the antique.

In the wake of the first image release, past Member Nadia Zakamska, whose research group has been involved with JWST since 2017, provides a deeper understanding of the telescope’s significance and reflects on her role in gathering and analyzing early release data.

During the heyday of the social movements of the 1960s, Martin Luther King’s citation of the abolitionist Theodore Parker’s—“the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice”—served as an inspirational and aspirational text. Even as events called into question that belief in the inevitability of progress, some things did seem to be permanent advancements.

When Karen Uhlenbeck was a MacArthur fellow, between 1983–88, she went on a series of incredible adventures visiting other MacArthur fellows and learning about their projects. “This was actually one of the high points of my life,” Uhlenbeck said to me, laughing. She recalls whale watching in Hawaii with Roger Payne, a trip to the Amazon to see Philip DeVries’s work with butterflies, studying lemurs in Madagascar with Pat Wright, and a Montana dinosaur dig with Jack Horner.