The Institute Letter Fall 2007

“I think that having now really had a chance to look at the world because of the good luck of my recent professional work, I am even more convinced that centers of excellence are essential for the future of mankind. I think that they are constantly...

In the public lecture "Terrorism and Just War," Michael Walzer, Professor Emeritus in the School of Social Science, explores multiple questions: First, what is wrong with terrorism? The query may seem easy, but it is often answered badly. Second, how...

The following text, from founding Director Abraham Flexner’s announcement of the appointment of Albert Einstein to the Institute's inaugural Faculty, was published in the New York Times on October 16, 1932.

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Over a hundred years have...

For the last twenty-one years, James D. Wolfensohn has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study. The longest serving Chairman in the Institute’s history thus far, he is pictured above at a Trustee dinner at...

Born on October 6, 1936, in British Columbia, Robert Langlands grew up in a small town where his father owned a building supply store. “When I was a child I liked to add and subtract,” says Langlands. “In our store, my mother worked. And I remember...

The Langlands program is incredibly vast and far-reaching. The deepest aspect of it, as far as we know, involves the number theory setting where Langlands started close to forty years ago. However, the Langlands program has all kinds of...