June 19, 2020
“Trying to appreciate mathematics without understanding its inner workings is like reading a description of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony instead of hearing it.” Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, on the differences between generic and exceptional beauty, and why one type of beauty proves more useful in describing the universe.
June 05, 2020
Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, remembers Freeman J. Dyson, the legendary physicist, writer, and fearless intellectual explorer who served on the Faculty in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for over 65 years. “As an eternal graduate student, a ‘rebel’ in his own words, Dyson was unafraid to question everything and everybody," writes Dijkgraaf in the PNAS . “… Perhaps he understood better than most that progress stems from disagreement more than agreement.”
February 12, 2020
On the podcast "The Joy of x," mathematician Steven Strogatz and Robbert Dijkgraaf , IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, explore quantum reality, discussing the frontiers of string theory and why space and time might not be the most fundamental things in the universe.
December 20, 2019
December 16, 2019
December 02, 2019
October 17, 2019
September 12, 2019
May 07, 2019
"In a perverse way, the refutation of a great conjecture can be even better news than its success, since the failure makes clear that our imagined map of the mathematical world is seriously wrong. Defeat can be productive, the reverse of a Pyrrhic victory." In a column for Quanta Magazine , Robbert Dijkgraaf , Director and Leon Levy Professor, covers how conjectures are proven, what makes a particular one great, and the role conjecture plays in the advancement of mathematics.
April 22, 2019
Listen to the BBC Radio 3 broadcast by Director's Visitor (2018) Sally Marlow , who interviews IAS Director Robbert Dijkgraaf , and Professors Joan Wallach Scott , Freeman J. Dyson , Nima Arkani-Hamed , and Myles W. Jackson .
April 18, 2019