page_title: Institute for Advanced Study
section_title: Impact
hierarchical_section_title: Institute for Advanced Study / Impact
caption_attribution_description: English: Institute for Advanced Study from the air. Taken August 2012.
context_page_description: The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent postdoctoral research center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Hermann Weyl, John von Neumann and Kurt Gödel, after their immigration to the United States. It was founded in 1930 by American educator Abraham Flexner, together with philanthropists Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld. Although it is close to and collaborates with Princeton University, Rutgers University, and other nearby institutions, it is independent and does not charge tuition or fees.
  Flexner's guiding principle in founding the Institute was the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. The faculty have no classes to teach. There are no degree programs or experimental facilities at the Institute. Research is never contracted or directed. It is left to each individual researcher to pursue their own goals.
context_section_description: From the day it opened the IAS had a major impact on mathematics, physics, economic theory, and world affairs. In mathematics forty-two out of sixty-one Fields Medalists have been affiliated with the Institute. Thirty-four Nobel Laureates have been working at the IAS. Of the sixteen Abel Prizes awarded since the establishment of that award in 2003, nine were garnered by Institute professors or visiting scholars. Of the fifty-six Cole Prizes awarded since the establishment of that award in 1928, thirty-nine have  gone to scholars associated with the IAS at some point in their career. IAS people have won 20 Wolf Prizes in mathematics and physics. 
  Its more than 6,000 former members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world.
  Pioneering work on the theory of the stored-program computer as laid down by Alan Turing was done at the IAS by John von Neumann, and the IAS machine built in the basement of the Fuld Hall from 1942 to 1951 under von Neumann's direction introduced the basic architecture of all modern digital computers. The IAS is the leading center of research in string theory and its generalization M-theory introduced by Edward Witten at the IAS in 1995. The Langlands program, a far-reaching approach which unites parts of geometry, mathematical analysis, and number theory was introduced by Robert Langlands, the mathematician who now occupies Albert Einstein's old office at the institute. Langlands was inspired by the work of Hermann Weyl, André Weil, and Harish-Chandra, all scholars with wide-ranging ties to the Institute, and the IAS maintains the key repository for the papers of Langlands and the Langlands program. The IAS is a main center of research for homotopy type theory, a modern approach to the foundations of mathematics which is not based on classical set theory.  A special year organized by Institute professor Vladimir Voevodsky and others resulted in a benchmark book in the subject which was published by the Institute in 2013.
  The Institute is or has been the academic home of many of the best minds of their generation. Among them are James Waddell Alexander II, Michael Atiyah, Enrico Bombieri, Shiing-Shen Chern, Pierre Deligne, Freeman J. Dyson, Albert Einstein, Clifford Geertz, Kurt Gödel, Albert Hirschman, George F. Kennan, Tsung-Dao Lee, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Erwin Panofsky, Atle Selberg, John von Neumann, André Weil, Hermann Weyl, Frank Wilczek, Edward Witten, Chen-Ning Yang and Shing-Tung Yau.
caption: Institute for Advanced Study campus
exif: {}