Institute For Advanced Study Appoints Five New Trustees

The Institute for Advanced Study has announced the appointment of five new members to its Board of Trustees: Jeffrey P. Bezos; Roger W. Ferguson, Jr.; Peter L. Galison; Martin Rees; and Peter Svennilson.

Jeffrey Bezos is president, CEO, and chairman of Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington. After graduating from Princeton University, Bezos worked in computer science and finance for Wall Street firms Bankers Trust and D.E. Shaw. In 1994 he founded Amazon, an Internet retailer of books, information-based products, and other goods. The company went public in 1997. Bezos was named Time magazine�s Man of the Year in 1999.

Roger Ferguson is serving his second term as Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He has been a member of that body since 1997. As Vice Chairman, he represents the Federal Reserve in international policy groups. He holds B.A., J.D., and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. Before joining the Federal Reserve, he was Director of Research and Information Systems for McKinsey and Company.

Peter Galison is Mallinckrodt Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. Galison was a 1997 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow, and is author of, among other books, Einstein�s Clocks, Poincar�s Maps (2003). He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University. A member of the Institute�s School of Social Science in 1994-95, he will be an Academic Trustee for the School of Social Science.

Martin Rees is Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College in the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal. His awards include the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Einstein Award of the World Cultural Council. Rees was an Academic Trustee for the Institute�s School of Natural Sciences from 1998 to 2003.

Peter Svennilson is founder of Three Crowns Capital, a biotech finance firm. He has helped start, develop, or finance several U.S. biotech companies, such as Sunesis, Somalogic, Chemocentryx, and Tercica. He has also served as managing director of Irongate and Stoneporch Ltd., and Assistant Managing Director of Nomura Securities, London. A member of the Swedish Economics Society, he holds an M.B.A. from Stockholm School of Economics.

The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world�s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It comprises four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science, each with a small permanent faculty of distinguished scholars. In addition, the Institute hosts some 200 members each year, from postdoctoral students to senior scholars, who come from more than a hundred institutions in some thirty countries for periods ranging from six months to a few years.