Video Lectures

One of the most important events in science dates back to 1687, when Newton published the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In this masterpiece of human thought, the famous second law of motion is laid out, which concretely and beautifully...

In the year AD 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted with devastating force, burying the nearby town of Pompeii under more than thirty feet of volcanic debris. Pompeii was wiped off the map, yet below the surface the material remains of the town were preserved...

This talk deals tells the story of one of the leading achromatic-lens makers of the 19th century who revolutionized astronomy, the German optician Joseph von Fraunhofer, whose name is associated with the dark lines that transect the solar spectrum...

Clifford Geertz once quipped: “It is difficult to see what is always there. Whoever discovered water, it was not a fish.” In the same way, seeing familiar environments can prove challenging. Those of us who live our lives in a given space become...

“Negative Energy, Quantum Information and Causality”

Einstein’s equations of gravity show that too much negative energy can lead to causality violations and causal paradoxes such as the so-called "grandfather paradox.” In...

Historians of Science and Medicine emphasize how the circulation of human biological material for global science involves complex exchange systems amongst foreign and local scientists. Here, notions of the gift and reciprocity underpin the idiom of...

Developments in fundamental physics over the last century have led to the formulation of a universal language successfully describing Nature from the subatomic scale to the universe as a whole. This language is known as quantum field theory. In spite...

Histories of ancient cultures often present the image of clearly recognizable peoples. Those who are centered in historical canons—Egyptians, Greeks, Romans—are often subject to the most longstanding and unyielding historical expectations. In this...

IAS Director Robbert Dijkgraaf recently remarked that 21st century scientists are shifting “from studying what is to what could be.” We urgently need a social science of what could be, if we are to face challenges from inequality and racial injustice...