Karen Uhlenbeck

In welcome remarks delivered to the 2025–26 class of IAS scholars, Director and Leon Levy Professor David Nirenberg reflected on the Institute’s role as "a special place" dedicated to discovery. He emphasized how the Institute's history, culture of solitude and community, and spirit of dialogue create an environment where scholars can push the boundaries of knowledge.

Mark Goresky, Visitor in the School of Mathematics (2024–29), recounts how Institute for Advanced Study scholars have weathered storms to advance their scholarship.

The “Paths to Math” series comes to a close with this special edition video, featuring one of our most beloved veteran mathematicians: Distinguished Visiting Professor Karen Uhlenbeck. Watch to see Karen describe the introduction to calculus course that awakened her love for math and her spirited female colleagues in Chicago, who helped to dispel any lingering doubts about being a woman mathematician.

Distinguished Visiting Professor Karen Uhlenbeck, a founder of modern geometric analysis, spoke with Joanne Lipman about her Abel Prize win, the barriers that she has overcome in her career, and how elevating the role of math in society would help solve problems such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Natalie Wolchover, Director's Visitor (2017), interviews Freeman J. Dyson, Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences, and Karen Uhlenbeck, Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics, on the close interconnection between mathematics and physics.

I think many of the people who are interested in congratulating me on the Abel Prize are doing so because I’m a woman and I’m the first woman to get it.

And I can’t help resist telling the story that actually it isn’t quite as unnerving as being...

On March 19, 2019, the IAS community gathered to celebrate 2019 Abel Prize laureate Karen Uhlenbeck with a reception in her honor.

Listen to remarks on Uhlenbeck's work and influence made by speakers (in order of appearance):

Helmut Hofer, Professor...

In 1990, Karen Uhlenbeck, 2019 Abel Prize Laureate, Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics, and co-founder of the Institute’s Women and Mathematics Program, became the second woman to give a Plenary Lecture at the...

I have spent three periods of time in residency at IAS, and I am looking forward to a fourth in the spring of 2012. In 1979–80, one of the first special years in mathematics at IAS took place, organized by S. T. Yau, who shortly afterwards received...