The Institute for Advanced Study came into being at the most inauspicious of times. Founded in the early years of the Great Depression, it took shape during the buildup to the Second World War and under the growing shadow of authoritarian regimes. Its first Director Abraham Flexner published his manifesto on the “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge” in October 1939, barely a month after the outbreak of hostilities in Europe. Surely this was a daunting moment to defend “the fearless and irresponsible thinker” and advocate for the free expression of knowledge and curiosity.
In November 1954, Albert
Einstein wrote a letter to a magazine in which he declared
that, were he a young man again, he would not try to become a
scientist: “I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in
the hope to find that modest degree...
To Albert Einstein, she was
“the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far
produced since the higher education of women began.” More
straightforward in his praise, Einstein’s fellow Professor at the
Institute for Advanced Study, Hermann...
On a beautiful overlook near the university, a middle-aged man
is enjoying the view of the majestic Fjord. Judging from his
clothing, he is a stonemason from the quarry just below him. But
actually, he is a professor at the university who often...
In November, out of the blue, I received a letter from the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Nothing about the
envelope suggested that the letter inside would be important. It
was an ordinary white office envelope with Institute for...
One of the key scientific contributions of the 20th century,
Claude Shannon's "A Mathematical Theory of Communication” created
the field of information theory in 1948. In addition to the impact
of information theory on communications technology...
Differential privacy disentangles learning about a dataset as a
whole from learning about an individual data contributor. Just now
entering practice on a global scale, the demand for advanced
differential privacy techniques and knowledge of basic...
In 2016, Avi Wigderson, Herbert H. Maass Professor in the School
of Mathematics, celebrates his sixtieth birthday. The Institute for
Advanced Study hosted a conference in honor of this occasion from
October 5 through October 8, 2016, with scholars...
The Institute hosted the Beyond Endoscopy conference, led by
Professor Emeritus Robert P. Langlands, on September 30 and October
1, 2016. View talks from the conference below.
Explore a collection of Robert Langlands’s papers, as well as
some of his lectures and correspondence, on topics ranging from
functoriality, representation theory, and base change to endoscopy,
Shimura varieties, percolation, and geometric theory.
