On November 14, the Institute for Advanced Study announced
the appointment of Robbert Dijkgraaf as its ninth Director,
succeeding, as of July 1, 2012, Peter Goddard, who has served as
Director since January 2004.
Philosophers have always been interested in moral questions, but
social scientists have generally been more reluctant to discuss
morals and moralities. This is indeed a paradox since the
questioning of the moral dimension of human life and social...
In 1900, David Hilbert published a list of twenty-three open
questions in mathematics, ten of which he presented at the
International Congress of Mathematics in Paris that year. Hilbert
had a good nose for asking mathematical questions as the
ones...
In the two years I spent at the Institute, 1957–59, I had the
opportunity of meeting two of the founders of the quantum
theory—Niels Bohr and Paul Dirac. In the case of Bohr, perhaps
“meeting” overstates the case. He was a Member in the spring
of...
In these turbulent times in the Middle East, I have found myself
working on the rise and fall of a late antique Jewish kingdom along
the Red Sea in the Arabian peninsula. Friends and colleagues alike
have reacted with amazement and disbelief when I...
