Institute for Advanced Study
 |
Fuld Hall |
The
Institute for Advanced Study is a private institution in
Princeton Township, New Jersey,
U.S.A., designed to foster pure cutting-edge research by scientists in a variety of fields without the complications of teaching or funding, or the agendas of sponsorship. Although located nearby, it is not a part of
Princeton University. The institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of
Albert Einstein and
John von Neumann after their immigration to the
United States. There are other Institutes of Advanced study in the U.S. and elsewhere which are based on the Princeton model.
The Institute consists of a School of Historical Studies, a School of Mathematics, a School of Natural Sciences, a School of Social Science, and a newly created program in Theoretical Biology. There is a small permanent
faculty for each school, supplemented by the Visiting Members who are selected for
fellowships each year. One might discern a certain ideology behind such an unusual collection of disciplines, although it is probably more accurate to say that the Institute has been distinguished more by the strong personalities that have passed through it over the years than any particular "mission statement."
There are no degree programs or experimental facilities at the Institute, and research is funded by endowments, grants and gifts — it does not support itself with tuition or fees. Research is never contracted or directed; it is left to each individual researcher to pursue his or her own goals.
It is not part of any educational institution; however, the proximity of Princeton University (less than three miles from its science departments to the Institute complex) means that informal ties are close and a large number of collaborations have arisen over the years. (The Institute was actually housed within Princeton University - in the building since called Jones Hall, which was then Princeton's mathematics department - for 6 years, from its opening in 1933, until Fuld Hall was finished and opened in 1939. This helped start an incorrect impression that it was part of Princeton, one that has never been completely eradicated.)
The institute was founded in
1930 by
Louis Bamberger and
Caroline Bamberger Fuld with the proceeds from their department store in
Newark, New Jersey. The founding of the institute was fraught with brushes against near-disaster; the Bamberger siblings pulled their money out of the stock market just before the
Stock Market Crash of 1929, and their original intent was to express their gratitude to the state of New Jersey through the founding of a
dental school. It was the intervention of their friend Dr.
Abraham Flexner, the prominent education theorist, that convinced them to put their money in the service of more abstract research.
The institute was founded, explicitly, to house Jewish emigrees (including Einstein) whom Princeton University refused to hire because of its institutional antisemitism.
Frank Aydelotte was Director of the Institute from 1939-47, followed by
J. Robert Oppenheimer who was Director 1947-66.
The Institute has been home to some of the most renowned thinkers in the world, including
Albert Einstein,
Kurt Gödel,
T. D. Lee and
C. N. Yang,
J. Robert Oppenheimer,
John von Neumann,
Freeman J. Dyson,
André Weil,
Hermann Weyl,
Frank Wilczek,
Edward Witten and
George F. Kennan to name just a few of the more widely known. (For more see
List of faculty members at the Institute for Advanced Study.)
* "The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in my opinion, has ruined more good scientists than any institution has created." --
Richard Hamming,
You and Your ResearchThere are numerous academic centres of varying status named as places for "Advanced Study" all over the world, but the Princeton-based Institute identifies itself primarily with the members of a select consortium known as
Some Institutes for Advanced Study (SIAS).
There are other, older institutions such as
All Souls College,
Oxford in the
United Kingdom and the
Collège de France in
Paris,
France which may be said to be part of the inspiration for the Princeton Institute, but these do not belong to the SIAS consortium. SIAS members were founded explicitly to follow the Princeton model (with certain variations - not all maintain a permanent faculty for instance), and place an emphasis on granting one-year fellowships.
In the United States, the next oldest member of the SIAS consortium is the
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavorial Sciences, exists near
Stanford University. Like the Princeton-based Institute, the Center is often assumed to be part of its nearby university but is actually an independent private institution. The Center is funded by the
Ford Foundation, and was founded after
WWII.
The more recent American member institutions have been founded since 1970. They are the
National Humanities Center in the
Research Triangle in
North Carolina; the
Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at
Harvard; the
Social Science Research Council and the
Russell Sage Foundation in
New York City.
The European SIAS members (which also came into being since 1970) are the
Collegium Budapest in
Budapest,
Hungary; the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in
Wassenaar,
the Netherlands; the
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, in
Uppsala,
Sweden; the
Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin in
Berlin,
Germany.
* Ed Regis,
Who Got Einstein's Office: Eccentricity and Genius at the Institute for Advanced Study (Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1987)
* Björn Wittrock,
Institutes for Advanced Study: Ideas, Histories, Rationales (
pdf file)
*
Official site*
Memories of the IAS on MemoryWiki
