Friends of the Institute

A Conversation with Pia de Jong

Pia de Jong, Columnist and Novelist
This special Friends Event will feature the novelist and columnist Pia de Jong, who will be reading from her most recent work and discussing her life as a writer in the United States. Since moving to Princeton with her family in 2012, Pia de Jong...

THE ART OF DINING: Downton Abbey

Francine Segan
Join returning speaker Francine Segan and discover the elaborate etiquette, enchanting entertainments, and dishes Mrs. Patmore would have been proud to send to the table. Vivid descriptions of Lord Grantham-esque dinner parties, cotillions, and...

The Frontiers and Limits of Science

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor

Every day, at the Institute for Advanced Study and elsewhere, scientists and scholars are exploring the frontiers of knowledge, from the structure of the universe to the patterns of human thought. But what is the shortest path from A to B, if you do...

A knot is simply a tangled loop in ordinary three-dimensional space, such as often causes us frustration in everyday life. Knots are also the subject of a rather rich mathematical theory. In the last three decades, it has unexpectedly turned out...