Ideas

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.

Geometry of arc spaces and the Hankel tranform by Ngô Bảo Châu

The...

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.

Harlan Robins was a trained physicist specializing in string theory when he arrived at the Institute as a Member in systems biology (2002–2006). "I didn't know any biology when I got here, so I would say my entire career as a biologist developed...

"There's so much we don't know about the world. We don't actually understand how physics works. We don't actually understand how biology works. We are a little confused about math and computer science in terms of the things that will happen in the...

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, gives a talk to incoming scholars on the mission and history of the Institute during Welcome Day on September 19, 2016.

In 2016, Professor Nathan Seiberg celebrates his sixtieth birthday and reaches his twentieth year as a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study. The conference celebrating these occasions was held at the Institute from September 15 through...

During the 2015-16 academic year, the School of Mathematics hosted a program on the topic of geometric structures in three dimensions. This article is an adaptation of a talk I gave in fall 2015, as part of the School's biweekly "Mathematical...

“This therefore, is mathematics: she reminds you of the invisible forms of the soul; she gives light to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion and...

Edward Nelson, Member in the Schools of Mathematics (1956–59, 79–80) and Natural Sciences (1963–64, 67–68, 73–74) and Professor of Mathematics at Princeton University until his death in 2014, was an original thinker best known for successfully...