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Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ
40° 19′ 54.51″ N, 74° 40′ 4.80″ W
“Small and Plastic”
Since 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, has welcomed some of the greatest theoretical thinkers from around the world. The Institute was created by a brother/sister pair of philanthropists as an independent body, where great minds would be free from academic pressures of “publish or perish” to work in a peaceful and welcoming environment.
Albert Einstein came here in 1933 and remained until his death in 1955. He lived nearby (at 112 Mercer Street—the house is not open to the public) and walked home each day across the Institute’s beautiful grounds. During Einstein’s first year at the Institute, the Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel visited and later joined the Institute to do research. He too stayed, until his death in 1978.
Einstein evidently considered Gödel a peer; the two walked to work together and home again, and Einstein told friends that he would go into work “just to have the privilege of walking home with Kurt Gödel.” Einstein had revolutionized physics during his Annus Mirabilis (see Chapter 33), and Gödel had revolutionized mathematics with his Incompleteness Theorem (see sidebar). This theorem showed that any system of mathematics had limits—some things would not be provable without inventing new mathematics (in other words, it would be necessary to “think outside the box” of any mathematical system to prove some theorems).
The Institute was home to many other stars, too: J. Robert Oppenheimer (“father” of the atomic bomb) was director of the Institute from 1947 to 1966, and John von Neumann (a prolific mathematician who is well known for helping to found game theory and computer architecture) came to the Institute in 1930 after fleeing from Europe. The list of alumni is long and illustrious and counts many Nobel Laureates, in particular winners of the Fields Medal (the closest thing mathematics has to a Nobel prize).
The Institute is not reserved for just physicists and mathematicians: it has four schools covering Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science. It is run by a small group of academics who oversee around 200 people, called members, studying freely toward whatever long-term goals they set for themselves. The first director of the Institute wished that it be “small and plastic”; to this day, the Institute remains focused on its core aim of letting its members think, free of outside pressures.
To give its members the space to think, the Institute is surrounded by open green spaces, including the Institute Woods, a nature reserve that covers 240 hectares and is open to the public. Visitors are free to roam the woods and enjoy the preserved environment much as Einstein, Gödel, and others have done over the years.
The Institute itself is not open to the public, but it does have a free public lecture series that covers topics such as computability, art history, archaeology, epidemia, and anything that the members find interesting. The lecture series is interspered with regular free concerts, and all the lectures are available for free download after the event.
Practical Information
Information about the Institute for Advanced Study is available from http://www.ias.edu/. The Institute Woods can be accessed from the parking area of Battlefield Park (off Mercer Street).