Ideas

Sergey Cherkis, a Member in the School of Mathematics (2020–21), is currently trying to understand instantons. Unlike particles in classical mechanics, quantum particles can tunnel through barriers by traveling in imaginary time. By combining his knowledge of mathematics and physics, Sergey is working to understand this peculiar behavior. Learn more about Sergey’s path, which begins with an early interest in mathematics and physics, and hear how mathematics itself became a tool for overcoming challenges on his academic journey.

Alison Locke Perchuk, past Member in the School of Historical Studies (2018-19), has authored the first interdisciplinary account of the Monastery of St. Elijah, built circa 1122-26 near Rome. It includes archaeological and historical readings of the monastery’s architecture, frescoes, and sculpture, with an eye toward epigraphy, liturgy, theology, memory, and landscape.

Terrence Blackman, Visitor in the School of Mathematics (2020–21), is a number theorist, who considers the question: “can one hear the shape of a drum?” Using the tools of spectral geometry, Terrence considers such questions as part of his research, which traces its roots back to Queen’s College in Guyana. Learn more about Terrence’s path, from his early interest in writing to a realization of the aesthetic and cultural significance of mathematics.

Death of a Traveller: A Counter Investigation by Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, was published on July 6, 2021, by Polity:

“It is a simple story. A 37-year-old man belonging to the Traveller community...

Kurt Gödel, a Member of the Institute Faculty in the School of Mathematics, is the topic of the biography Journey to the Edge of Reason by Stephen Budiansky, published by W. W. Norton.

In conducting research for the book, Budiansky worked closely...

The University of Washington Press has published Revolutionary Jews from Spinoza to Marx: The Fight for a Secular World of Universal and Equal Rights by Jonathan Israel in June 2021:

“In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries a small but...

The Spectre of War: International Communism and the Origins of World War II by Jonathan Haslam, George F. Kennan Professor in the School of Historical Studies, was published May 25, 2021, by Princeton University Press:

“The Spectre of War looks at...

Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains (Finalist, National Book Awards 2021 for Nonfiction) by Lucas Bessire, past Member in the School of Social Science, was published by Princeton University Press on May 18, 2021:

“The Ogallala...

“I think an unaccompanied scholar, particularly a male, probably has the best of all possible worlds at the Institute.” 
—Social Science Member in the 1970s, male, age 50 at the moment of the questionnaire in 1976

Founded in 1930, the Institute for...

The dramatic story of the origins of the Second World War has long been used by politicians to buttress foreign policy. The stark lesson, certainly in Britain, where the consequences of naïveté were the most severe, but also for the French, who...