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A private, academic, non-degree granting institution founded in 1930 in Princeton, New Jersey. Students are postdoctorate or senior scholars who conduct independent, intensive research through any of the institute's four schools.
It is not affiliated with any other academic institution but has an informal relationship with Princeton University.See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.
The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey, was founded in 1930 by a gift from Louis Bamberger and his sister, Caroline Bamberger Fuld. During the preceding year, they had decided to sell their business, R. H. Macy and Company, and devote their time and fortune to philanthropic endeavors. Although they remained involved in structuring and formulating the Institute, they created a board of trustees and a directorship to supervise academic programs and oversee administration. Abraham Flexner, a classicist as well as an innovator of American medical education, was chosen as the first director and, in many ways, determined the Institute's future course.
In an early letter to the board of trustees, the founders envisioned the Institute as a place for "the pursuit of advanced learning and exploration in fields of pure science and high scholarship to the utmost degree that the facilities of the institution and the ability of the faculty and students will permit." The Institute has retained the spirit of the founders' vision, while also revising its particular mission. The Bambergers had initially imagined establishing an entirely new university, but as they discussed their ideas with Flexner, they devised a new model of scholarship, unburdened by the administrative demands of a university. Primarily under the leadership of Flexner, the Institute carved out an identity somewhere between the traditional roles of university and research institute. The Institute still does not award any higher degrees and does not provide any formal graduate training. Its small size and highly specialized academic agenda remain points of pride.
In the fall of 1932, Albert Einstein and Oswald Veblen were approved as the first academic appointments to the Institute's newly established School of Mathematics. Two years later, the Schools of Humanistic Studies and Politics were added to the Institute's academic scope. In the following six decades, the Institute formally designated five areas of study, including the Schools of Mathematics (1933), Historical Studies (1948), Natural Sciences (1966), Social Sciences (1973), and, most recently, Theoretical Biology (1998).Each school has a small permanent faculty but relies quite heavily on the academic strength and contributions of the approximately 180 fellows invited to the Institute each year.
Although the Institute enjoys a close, symbiotic relationship with nearby Princeton University, it is administratively and financially independent. Funding comes from a number of different private and public sources, including gifts from corporations and individuals and grants from government agencies. Fellows and faculty of the Institute are given the opportunity to explore Prince-ton's resources and attend lectures and seminars sponsored by the university, but they are not expected to teach any courses. Likewise, members of the Princeton community can attend events at Institute facilities.
The historical moment of the Institute's founding, when Nazism and fascism were on the rise in Europe, set a precedent for close ties to the international scholarly community. In its early years, the Institute provided academic asylum for many refugee scholars from the Continent. To this day, the Institute invites scholars from around the world to engage in serious learning and research. It also is committed to providing opportunities for new scholars to focus on their independent work in the company of other scholars, without the demands of teaching. The Institute houses its faculty and fellows and offers a number of cultural activities, lectures, and seminars to foster a sense of academic exchange.
Over the last decades of the twentieth century the faculty of the Institute has included scholars such as Clifford Geertz, George Kennan, Joan Wallach Scott, and Michael Walzer. From 1991, Phillip A. Griffiths served as director.
Bibliography
The Institute for Advanced Study: Some Introductory Information. Princeton, N.J., 1975.
Institute for Advanced Study home page at http://www.ias.edu.
The Institute for Advanced Study, located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States, is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support fundamental scholarship – the original, often speculative, thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. It provides for the mentoring of younger scholars by Faculty, and it offers all who work there the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute is a private, independent academic institution. It was founded in 1930 by philanthropists Louis Bamberger and his sister Caroline Bamberger Fuld, and established through the vision of founding Director Abraham Flexner. Past Faculty have included Albert Einstein, who remained at the Institute until his death in 1955, and distinguished scientists and scholars such as Kurt Gödel, J. Robert Oppenheimer, George Placzek, Erwin Panofsky, Homer A. Thompson, John von Neumann, George Kennan and Hermann Weyl.
Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science. Currently, a permanent Faculty of twenty-seven eminent academics guides the work of the Schools and each year awards fellowships to some 190 visiting Members, from about one hundred universities and research institutions throughout the world. Dr. Peter Goddard is the current Director of the Institute.
The Institute has no formal links to other educational institutions. However, since its founding, it has enjoyed close, collaborative ties with Princeton University and other nearby institutions. The abundant natural beauty of the Institute’s 800-acre site, including the Institute Woods, farm fields, and wetlands, form a key link in a network of green spaces in central New Jersey. These lands, the majority of which have been permanently conserved, provide a tranquil environment for Institute scholars and members of the community.
The Institute is perhaps best known as the academic home of Albert Einstein, John von Neumann, and Erwin Panofsky 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 Systems 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 medical 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.
Though it has been rumored that the institute was founded, explicitly, to house Jewish emigrees (including Einstein) whom Princeton University refused to hire because of its institutional antisemitism, the statement is false. Even Princeton University had Jews on its faculty then, including Solomon Lefschetz in mathematics. An early letter to the trustees from the founders, Louis Bamberger and his sister, Carrie B. F. Fuld, spells out this ideal: "It is fundamental in our purpose, and our express desire, that in the appointments to the staff and faculty as well as in the admission of workers and students, no account shall be taken directly or indirectly, of race, religion, or sex" (p. 46). Though it is true that of the first appointments to the fledgling institute, two went to famous Jewish refugees from Europe: Einstein and von Neumann, none of their four colleagues in the School of Mathematics was Jewish: Oswald Veblen, James Alexander, Marston Morse, and Hermann Weyl (though Weyl was married to a Jewish woman).
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, Harish-Chandra, Joan W. Scott, 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.)
There are numerous academic centres of varying status named as places for "Advanced Study" all over the world, but the Princeton-based Institute is the original institution upon which was based the other members a select consortium known as Some Institutes for Advanced Study (SIAS).
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