Michael Freedman

Jim Simons, IAS Trustee Emeritus and former Member in the School of Mathematics, gives a firsthand account of the work that would become known as Chern–Simons theory.

The result of Simons's collaboration with Shiing-Shen Chern, also a former Member...

In the past decade, physicists have found that topology provides unique insight into the physics of materials, such as how some insulators can sneakily conduct electricity along a single-atom layer on their surfaces.

Some of these topological effects...