News

Edward Witten, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, has been announced as an honorary fellow of the Learned Society of Wales, a distinction conferred upon select notable individuals for their "expertise and experience, and their research and knowledge leadership." Witten was recognized for his "profound contributions to contemporary physics." 

Francesca Trivellato, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has been elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, joining nearly 250 honorees recognized for their expertise and leadership. A number of other Institute-affiliated scholars, representing all four IAS Schools, were also elected.

Two Members from the School of Social Science, Heba Gowayed (2022–23) and Peniel Emmaus Joseph (2025–26), have been named to the 2025 Class of Andrew Carnegie Fellows. This year's fellows will conduct research "that seeks to understand how and why our society has become so polarized and how we can strengthen the forces of cohesion to fortify our democracy."

Nine past and incoming scholars across three IAS Schools—Historical Studies, Mathematics, and Social Science—have received 2025 Guggenheim Fellowships. The scholars were recognized for "both prior career achievement and exceptional promise" in fields ranging from classical archaeology and U.S. history to graph theory and combinatorics.

At a ceremony held in Istanbul on April 10, 2025, Wendy Brown, UPS Foundation Professor in the School of Social Science, was presented with a Sakıp Sabancı International Research Award for her contributions to scholarship on the theme of "Realigning Values in a Transforming World Order: What needs preserving, reevaluating, and redefining?"

Three past IAS scholars representing the Schools of Mathematics and Natural Sciences have been named among the 2025 Breakthrough Prize Foundation laureates: Dennis Gaitsgory, John Pardon, and Gerard 't Hooft. Popularly known as "the Oscars of Science," the Breakthrough Prize honors scholars who are "driving remarkable discoveries" in their fields.

Itai Linial, Member (2022–23); Shi-Fan Chen, Member (2022–25); and Nadine Soliman, Member (2025–30), all from the School of Natural Sciences, have received 2025 Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowships from NASA. The trio will join an “outstanding” class of fellows to address questions such as “How does the universe work?” and “How did we get here?”

Four of the six recipients of the International Congress of Basic Science's 2025 Basic Science Lifetime Award are past IAS scholars: Shigefumi Mori, George Lusztig, and Robert Tarjan from the School of Mathematics and David Gross from the School of Natural Sciences. The award is bestowed upon “extraordinary” scientists in their respective fields.

Yue Hu, NASA Hubble Fellow in the School of Natural Sciences, has been announced as one of the recipients of the 2025 Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Doctoral Dissertation Award in Astrophysics. Hu's thesis was praised for opening "new ways of exploring the properties of astrophysical turbulent magnetic fields."

Masaki Kashiwara, Member (1977–78) in the School of Mathematics, has been awarded the 2025 Abel Prize, often described as the mathematics equivalent of the Nobel Prize, for his “fundamental contributions to algebraic analysis and representation theory, in particular the development of the theory of D-modules and the discovery of crystal bases.”