Ideas

For Frankfurter Allgemeine, Novina Göhlsdorf interviews James D. Wolfensohn Professor Didier Fassin about conspiracy theories and public health.

Agustin Moreno, Member in the School of Mathematics, is exploring a restricted case of the three-body problem—a concept that considers the complex motion of three masses under the influence of a force such as gravity.

Pandemic Exposures: Economy and Society in the Time of Coronavirus, a collection of essays on the COVID-19 pandemic and its reverberations, edited by James D. Wolfensohn Professor Didier Fassin and Visiting Professor Marion Fourcade (2019-20).

The Institute for Advanced Study distributed $21,742.50 in stipends for mathematics and $10,000 for theoretical physics during the academic year 1935–36. Three hundred dollars, sufficient to secure entry to the United States, was awarded to the Polish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam (1909–84), who had written to John von Neumann about a problem in measure theory in 1934.

The new Rubenstein Commons building at the Institute for Advanced Study, designed by Steven Holl Architects, stands in stark contrast to the explicitly functionalist forms of other modern buildings on campus: the Member housing, designed by Marcel Breuer, or even the welcoming but austere (what’s known as “brutalist”) spaces of the dining hall, designed by Robert Geddes.

This Scholar Spotlight features Jacob Gates Foster, who shares his passion for the Institute and his motivation for pursuing social science research. After spending time at IAS, meeting new colleagues, and attending seminars, Jacob is tackling new ideas and exploring different frameworks for his research.

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has completed volume two of his catalogue raisonné of American painter Ellsworth Kelly. Working with the artist’s estate, Bois has produced a thorough catalogue of the artist’s paintings, sculptures, and reliefs between the years 1954 and 1958, including high-quality reproductions of the art, history of ownership and exhibition, and bibliographic notes. 

Richard Schwartz loves simple questions. Here, he discusses the benefits of intellectual enterprise and how the quest to answer fundamental questions underpins his work. His passion for explaining math simply inspired a series of children's books.

Sonja van Wichelen is focused on bioscience governance and global inequality—a particularly important topic to understand in the midst of a pandemic. She talks about her father’s inspiration and her hope for a more equitable society.

Jo Dunkley is an astrophysicist who studies the origins and evolution of the universe. In this short video she explains how her love of mathematics helped her realize that math tools can help us find answers to questions about our world.