Institute for Advanced Study
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
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[edit] The School
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.)
[edit] History
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.
[edit] Faculty
The Institute has been home to some of the most renowned thinkers in the world, including Albert Einstein, Kurt Gödel, Claude Shannon, 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.)
[edit] Quotes
- "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 Research
[edit] Other Institutes for Advanced Study
There 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.
[edit] Further reading
- 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)
[edit] External links
