More than seventy-five years ago, Founding Director Abraham
Flexner sought to create with the Institute for Advanced Study a
haven where “scholars and scientists may regard the world and its
phenomena as their laboratory, without being carried off...
The following excerpt by Abraham Flexner, Founding Director
of the Institute for Advanced Study, was published in The New
York Times on April 17, 1932:
The world is not yet civilized. None the less it is a better
world today than at any time in...
In the public lecture “The World’s Largest Experiment,” Nathan
Seiberg, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences, discusses the
Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the potential discoveries it may
yield—among them, new insights about the origin of...
Underlying the 2004 law banning the wearing of Islamic
headscarves in French public schools is a fundamental clash between
French and Muslim gender systems, according to Joan Wallach Scott,
Harold F. Linder Professor in the School of Social Science...
In his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, the Dutch
philosopher Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) explained the
fundamental principles of the state he had defined:
“But its ultimate purpose is not to dominate or control people
by fear or subject them to...
Kurt Gödel’s achievement in modern logic is singular and
monumental—indeed it is more than a monument, it is a landmark
which will remain visible far in space and time.
—John von Neumann
Upon presenting Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) with the Albert
Einstein...
One of the final privileges to which members of the Faculty at
the Institute accede as they approach retirement, is that of
suggesting to their colleagues the names of possible successors. I
was the third in the series of art historians, following...
In the public lecture “Why Haven’t Global Markets Reduced
Inequality?” Eric Maskin, Albert O. Hirschman Professor in the
School of Social Science, asks: Why does inequality persist between
rich and poor in developing countries? The theory of...
