Ideas

Didier Fassin, James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, has edited If Truth Be Told: The Politics of Public Ethnography (Duke University Press, 2017), which includes contributions by former Members Lucas Bessire, Gabriella...

In this public lecture, Thomas Piketty, Professor at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (EHESS) and the École d’économie de Paris/Paris School of Economics, presents new findings and reflections on global inequality dynamics as part...

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 the...

Abraham Flexner’s perspective on the “usefulness of useless knowledge” has only gained in substance and breadth since his time. First and foremost, as Flexner argues so elegantly, basic research clearly advances knowledge in and of itself...

The Institute for Advanced Study came into being at the most inauspicious of times. Founded in the early years of the Great Depression, it took shape during the buildup to the Second World War and under the growing shadow of authoritarian regimes. Its first Director Abraham Flexner published his manifesto on the “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” in October 1939, barely a month after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. Surely this was a daunting moment to defend “the fearless and irresponsible thinker” and advocate for the free expression of knowledge and curiosity. 

and we bopped to a sync of dry leaves’ kick and crackle
with the Skip-To-My-Lou of daughter Hillary hailing
Princeton’s pre-school bus that mustered those fledgling

flocks set to soar and sing like the...

In this public lecture, held at the Institute on May 5, 2017, Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, focuses on Matisse's use of the bamboo stick in large-scale works and the bodily conception of scale it entails. In a...

In November 1954, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to a magazine in which he declared that, were he a young man again, he would not try to become a scientist: “I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree...

In 1930, the Institute 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. 

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...