Curated playlist
Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars
- T. S. EliotT. S. Eliot compared an evening sky to a patient on a surgical table.
- Joseph StiglitzJoseph Stiglitz explained why wages stay high in recessions even when workers are desperate for jobs.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- Nathan RosenNathan Rosen co-authored the first known wormhole paper in July 1935. He was Albert Einstein's assistant at the time.
- Rudolf CarnapRudolf Carnap argued that most deep philosophical questions were meaningless.
- Paul DiracPaul Dirac's 1928 equation predicted antimatter, and the positron appeared in 1932.
- John Forbes Nash Jr.John Forbes Nash Jr., an American mathematician, once mailed letters to embassies in Washington, D.C., announcing that he was founding a government. He signed them John Nash, Emperor of Antarctica, a title he believed he was in line to…
- Claude ShannonClaude Shannon built a mechanical mouse that learned its way through a maze. He named the 1950 machine Theseus.
- Niels BohrNiels Bohr passed out in the bomb bay of a British plane over Norway. His flying helmet was too small for him to wear.
- Boris PodolskyPhysicist Boris Podolsky may have sold Soviet agents a public science law for $300.
- Peter BergmannPeter Bergmann's mother wrote to Einstein in 1933 asking him to take her son as a student.
- Emmy NoetherEmmy Noether lectured at Göttingen under a man's name. Her classes were advertised as Hilbert's, with her as assistant.
- George SteinerGeorge Steiner was born Francis George Steiner on the 23rd of April 1929. He was a literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist and educator, and he is described as both French and American. Harriet Harvey-Wood, a former literature…
- Lee SmolinLee Smolin dropped out of high school and took up Einstein's unfinished work. He called it his mission.
- Subrahmanyan ChandrasekharSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar sailed from India to England in 1930, and on that first sea voyage he worked out a number that would outlive him. The number was 1.44. It is the greatest mass, counted in suns, that a white dwarf star can have. A…
- Paul ErdősPaul Erdős, the Hungarian mathematician born in 1913, spent most of his adult life living out of a suitcase. Time magazine called him "The Oddball's Oddball". His biographer Paul Hoffman went further and described him as "probably the most…