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www.ias.edu

A Community of ScholarsOn April 10, 1955, theNew York Times announced the publication of a bibliographic volume pub-

lished under J. Robert Oppenheimer, then Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, on the occa-sion of the Institute’s twenty-fifth anniversary. The volume covered the work of one thousand formerand present Members of the Institute and included four thousand publications ranging from AlbertEinstein’s latest writings on unified field theory to T. S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party.The volume was brought up to date in 1980 on the occasion of the Institute’s fiftieth anniversary

and published as A Community of Scholars: The Institute for Advanced Study 1930–1980. In his fore-word, Harry Woolf, then Director of the Institute, quoted Oppenheimer: “History teaches––and eventhe brief history of the Institute confirms––that new knowledge leads to new power and new wisdom,and alters the destiny and heightens the dignity of man.”Recently, a list of scholars formally affiliated with the Institute from its founding in 1930 up to the

present day has been published on the Institute’s website at www.ias.edu/people/cos. The Institute’seightieth anniversary presents a fitting occasion to invite past and present Institute scholars to sub-mit additional biographical and bibliographical information, which will be published online for theInstitute community beginning in March 2010 (see article on page 3 for more detail).

IASThe Institute LetterS09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 12

IASThe Institute LetterInstitute for Advanced Study Fall 2009

Picasso HarlequinA Major Exhibition Explores Picasso’s

Clash of Incompatible MannersBY YVE-ALAIN BOIS

Two years ago I was asked to orga-nize a medium-size Picasso exhibi-tion in Rome, the first in that citysince 1953, that would function as anintroduction to the artist’s work for awhole generation of Romans who hadnot been exposed to it (unless they hadtraveled, of course). Had I known thatI would not be able to borrow anythingfrom the Musée Picasso in Parisbecause it had rented out its entire col-lection for several years, or anticipatedother frustrations of the same magni-tude, I probably would have declinedthe offer. But what I call the “smell ofturpentine” was so strong that I discard-ed all caution—I find few things asrewarding as being able to bring togetherseveral artworks and engineer a dia-logue among them. And the intellectual

BY STEPHEN L. ADLER

For slightly over a year, I have largely put aside mylongtime interests in the foundations of quantummechanics and in particle physics, and have been work-ing on dark matter. This interest came about in twodifferent ways. The first was a paper on models for mod-ifications of the Schrödinger equation on which I wasworking with my frequent collaborator Angelo Bassiduring the 2007–08 academic year. The models calledfor a noise source to act weakly on ordinary matter, andone of the mechanisms I decided to try was dark mattercollisions with ordinary matter. I started learning aboutdark matter through a lunch with IAS Visitor MasatakaFukugita, whom I had met at a dinner at Peter and SueGoldreich’s. Following this, I made what I considered a“toy model” for the paper I was writing with Angelo—not a realistic mechanism for our purposes, but it got melearning and thinking about dark matter.The second way was a news item that my wife Sarah

showed me in the Economist about the so-called “flyby”anomalies. When spacecraft are put in “flyby” orbits,passing close to the earth to produce large changes indirection, the outgoing velocity is found to deviate from

expectations by about a part in a million. (A review fora general physics audience is given in “Earth FlybyAnomalies,” by Michael M. Nieto and John D. Anderson,Physics Today, October 2009.) Sometimes the spacecraftslows down slightly (as would be expected from normaldrag), but in some cases it speeds up, a really weirdeffect if true. I made a mental note to look for the arti-cle when published in a journal, and when a detailedreport appeared in Physical Review Letters1, I asked ScottTremaine what he thought. He said that the group at JetPropulsion Lab that wrote it has a reputation for carefulwork, so one couldn’t just dismiss it. So I started to thinkabout possible explanations.Having been in physics for nearly fifty years, I have

seen many purported new effects be discounted asimprovements have been made in the experiments orthe analysis. The most probable explanation of the flybyanomalies is that they are the result of an inadvertentomission of some conventional physics from the analy-sis. People are still actively pursuing this route, but so farnothing convincing has emerged, and many things have

Is There Dark Matter in Orbit around the Earth?

Einstein Drive, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 www.ias.edu

Understanding the Genetic Evolution ofthe Pandemic H1N1 Virus

BY RAÚL RABADÁN

On March 28, 2009, a nine-year-old girl visited a clinicnear San Diego with a fever andcough. Similar cases of febrilerespiratory illness followed withinthe next two weeks in severalplaces in California and Texas. Atthe same time, Mexican publichealth authorities were reportingan increasing number of cases ofrespiratory disease, some of themleading to serious complications,severe pneumonia, and death. InMexico City, the number of pa-tients with severe respiratory ill-ness increased dramatically, with854 cases of pneumonia and 59reported deaths by April 24. Noneof the initial patients in the Unit-ed States had traveled to Mexico

The earth flyby of the asteroid-lander NEAR spacecraft resulted inan unexplained velocity increase of over one centimeter per second,much larger than estimated measurement errors.

Pablo Picasso, Woman in a Hat, 1934(Continued on page 8)

1 J. D. Anderson et al., Physical Review Letters 100, 091102 (2008)

(Continued on page 10)

NASA/JHUAPL

The history of reassortment events in the evolution ofthe 2009 influenza A (H1N1) virus

(Continued on page 4)

ESTATEOFPABLOPICASSO/ARTISTSRIGHTSSOCIETY,NEWYORK

NEWENGLANDJOURNALOFMEDICINE/MASSACHUSETTSMEDICALSOCIETY

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 1

YVE-ALAIN BOIS, Professor in the School of His-torical Studies, has edited Gabriel Orozco (MITPress, 2009), a collection of critical writings on theartist, whose work has been called “uncategorizable.” Itincludes essays by prominent critics such as BenjaminBuchloh, Briony Fer, Molly Nesbit, and Bois. He hasalso edited Picasso Harlequin 1917–1937 (Skira, 2009), amulti-author volume that functioned as the cataloguefor an exhibition he curated in the fall of 2008. Theessays concern Picasso’s unprecedented diversity as anartist during the two decades separating his trip to Romeand his creation of Guernica.

q

Princeton University Press has published The Empireof Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhoodby DIDIER FASSIN, James D. Wolfensohn Professor inthe School of Social Science, and Richard Rechtman,Medical Director of the Institut Marcel Rivière inFrance. The authors use ethnographic work on victimsof disasters, wars, and persecutions to analyze morebroadly the moral significance of trauma, its use as apolitical resource for reparation, testimony, or proof, andthe advent of the victim in the contemporary world.

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ERIC S. MASKIN, Albert O. Hirschman Professorin the School of Social Science, has been elected anHonorary Fellow of Jesus College in the University ofCambridge. He was also inducted into the Royal Acad-emy of Economic and Financial Sciences of Spain andpresented an address to the Catalan Parliament as partof the induction ceremonies.

q

CHRISTIAN HABICHT, Professor Emeritus in theSchool of Historical Studies, was honored in Sep-tember with a festschrift, Attika Epigraphica. Studies inHonor of Christian Habicht, edited by Athanasios A.

Themos and Nikolaos Papazarkadas, and presented tohim in Athens. The volume, the tenth monograph ofthe Greek Epigraphic Society, contains twenty-onepapers delivered in Athens by authors from seven coun-tries to mark Habicht’s eightieth birthday in April 2006.

q

Princeton University Press has published The Cogni-tive Challenge of War: Prussia 1806, an expanded textof the 2008 Lees Knowles Lectures given at the Univer-sity of Cambridge by PETER PARET, Professor Emeritusin the School of Historical Studies. The work is a casestudy of a clash between traditional and innovativemethods of war, and of the military, political, and cul-tural efforts of the defeated to master and effectivelyrespond to new methods.

q

ANDREW WILES, Institute Trustee and current.Visitor in the School of Mathematics, has beenappointed to a Royal Society 2010 AnniversaryResearch Professorship in the University of Oxford.Currently Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics atPrinceton University, Wiles will take up this new posi-tion at Oxford’s Mathematical Institute and MertonCollege in 2011.

q

DEREK BERMEL, current Artist-in-Residence, hasbeen nominated for a Grammy Award for hisrecording Voices (BMOP/sound, 2009) in the category ofBest Instrumental Soloist Performance with Orchestra.The awards will be presented at the fifty-second annualGrammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles on January 31.

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SIOBHAN ROBERTS, currently a Director’s Visitor,has been awarded the Euler Book Prize of the Math-ematical Association of America, presented annually foran outstanding book about mathematics. Roberts wasrecognized for her book King of Infinite Space: DonaldCoxeter, the Man Who Saved Geometry (Walker andCompany, 2006).

q

LAKHDAR BRAHIMI, former Director’s Visitor(2006–08) affiliated with the School of Social Sci-ence, has been awarded the first-class medal of unifica-tion by President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. Brahimiis the former Special Adviser to the Secretary-Generalof the United Nations and the former Foreign Ministerof Algeria.

q

JULIA CLANCY-SMITH, current Member in theSchool of Social Science, has been selected by theAmerican Historical Association as the recipient of the2009 William Gilbert Award for the Best Article onTeaching History. The article, “An Undergraduate andGraduate Colloquium in Social History and Biographyin the Modern Middle East and North Africa,” appearedin Teaching Life Writing Texts, edited by Miriam Fuchsand Craig Howe (Modern Language Association).

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SUSAN RANKIN, current Member in the School ofHistorical Studies, has been elected a Fellow of theBritish Academy.

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MICHAEL AIZENMAN, former Member in theSchool of Natural Sciences (1984–85) andthe School of Mathematics (1991–92, 1997–98), hasreceived the 2010 Dannie Heineman Prize forMathematical Physics. Aizenman is currently Professorof Physics and Mathematics at Princeton University.

KAUSHIK BASU, former Member (1985–86) in theSchool of Social Science, has been appointed byPrime Minister Manmohan Singh of India as the ChiefEconomic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance. Basu iscurrently C. Marks Professor of International Studiesand Professor of Economics, Chair of the Department ofEconomics, and Director of the Center for AnalyticEconomics at Cornell University.

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MARIACHUDNOVSKY, formerMember (2003–05)in the School of Mathematics, has received, withthree collaborators, the 2009 Delbert Ray Fulkerson Prize,awarded jointly by the American Mathematical Societyand the Mathematical Programming Society every threeyears for outstanding papers in discrete mathematics.She and her colleagues were recognized for their paper“The Strong Perfect Graph Theorem,” which appearedin the Annals of Mathematics 164 (2006). Chudnovsky iscurrently Associate Professor of Industrial Engineeringand Operations Research at Columbia University.

q

MICHAEL GREEN, former Member (1970–72) inthe School of Natural Sciences, has been electedthe eighteenth Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in theUniversity of Cambridge, succeeding Stephen Hawking.The Lucasian Chair, established in 1663, has previouslybeen held by Isaac Newton and Paul Dirac.

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JAMES GUNN, former Member (2005) and Visitor(1974) in the School of Natural Sciences, has beenawarded the National Medal of Science. Gunn is theEugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy at PrincetonUniversity.

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YOSEF KAPLAN, former Member (2007–08) in theSchool of Historical Studies, was elected Presidentof the World Union of Jewish Studies at the FifteenthWorld Congress of Jewish Studies, held in Jerusalem inAugust. Kaplan is currently the Bernard Cherrick Pro-fessor of the History of the Jewish People in the MandelInstitute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem.

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HIROSI OOGURI, former Member (1988–89) inthe School of Natural Sciences, has been awardedthe 2009 Nishina Memorial Prize, the oldest physicsaward in Japan, presented by the Nishina MemorialFoundation. Ooguri is the Fred Kavli Professor of Theo-retical Physics at the California Institute of Technologyand Principal Investigator at the Institute for thePhysics and Mathematics of the Universe.

2

News of the Institute Community

C o n t e n t s

2 News of the Institute Community

3 Letter from the DirectorA Community of ScholarsHarold T. Shapiro Elected to the Board of Trustees

4 Expanding the Horizons of Knowledge Beyond One’sOriginal Expertise

5 A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way tothe Institute

Talking Points

6 The Tavern and the Meeting House

7 The Edward T. Cone Concert Series: An EclecticMix of Performances

9 Fostering Conversations about Mathematics amongDifferent Nations

New Director for PCMIProfessional Development Program for New Jersey

Mathematics Teachers Seeks Funding for Growth

10 An Opportunity and Challenge for the Friends of theInstitute

11 Lecture on Public Policy: Torture and Accountability inthe “War on Terror”

Planned Gifts Provide Institute with Funding forMemberships and Research

Questions and comments regardingthe Institute Letter should be directed to

Kelly Devine Thomas, Senior Publications Officer,via email at kdthomas@ias.edu

or by telephone at (609) 734-8091.

Issues of the Institute Letter and other Institute publicationsare available online at www.ias.edu/about/publications.

How happy the Member who choosesTo dwell in the dell of the Muses.

Delighted to rootFor this swell Institute

And to work at whatever (s)he chooses.

— David Ganz, Hetty Goldman Member inthe School of Historical Studies and Professor inthe Department of Classics at King’s CollegeLondon, written shortly after arriving at the

Institute in September

KATEABLUTZ

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 2

Harold T. Shapiro, President Emeritus ofPrinceton University and the University ofMichigan, has been elected to the Board ofTrustees of the Institute for Advanced Study.Shapiro is currently Professor in the Departmentof Economics and the Woodrow Wilson Schoolof Public and International Affairs at PrincetonUniversity, where his fields of interest includeeconometrics, bioethics, science policy, and theevolution of postsecondary education.

As part of the Institute’s recent Decadal Review,a comprehensive assessment undertaken during thepast two years of how well the Institute has beenfulfilling its mission, Shapiro served as Chair ofthe Institute’s Visiting Committees for the Schoolsof Natural Sciences and Historical Studies.

Shapiro received his undergraduate degreefrom McGill University in 1956 and his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1964, both in eco-nomics. He then joined the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he wasnamed Vice President for Academic Affairs in 1977 and elected President in 1980.Shapiro took office as President of Princeton University in 1988 and served until2001, when he became President Emeritus. He continued to teach during his presi-dencies at both universities.

During the administration of President George W. Bush, Shapiro served as a mem-ber and Vice Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technologyfrom 1990 to 1992. He also served President William Jefferson Clinton’s administra-tion as Chair of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission from 1996 to 2001.

Shapiro is the author of several books, including A Larger Sense of Purpose: HigherEducation and Society (Princeton University Press, 2005). In 2008, he was awarded theClark Kerr Medal for Distinguished Leadership in Higher Education, presented annu-ally by the Academic Senate of the University of California, Berkeley.

Shapiro is an elected Member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute ofMedicine and of the American Philosophical Society. He is a Fellow of the College ofPhysicians of Philadelphia, an active Member of the European Academy of Sciences andArts, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He serves on the boards of a number of charitable, medical, and educational insti-tutions, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Technion–Israel Institute of Tech-nology, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, and DeVry Inc.,where he is Chairman of the Board. �

The Institute’s mission, of providing leading scholarsand scientists the resources and freedom to followtheir own research guided by their own intellectualcuriosity, has remained unchanged since its foundation.As 2009 draws to a close, for more than one reason,the Institute is reflecting on its mission and how bestto further those aims. A two-year process of review,involving studies of all aspects of the Institute’s work-ings, academic and administrative, is nearing its close.Reviews of one form or another have been conductedat roughly ten-year intervals since the mid-1950s.

Our latest Decadal Review affirms that the Insti-tute remains a leading center for theoretical research,

providing its Members and Visitors with exceptional opportunities for the develop-ment of their ideas, and increasingly it has acted as inspiration or paradigm for thefounding of new institutes for advanced study around the world. That said, excel-lence is not maintained by complacency; our review has shown us a number of areaswhere there are opportunities for improvements in or fine-tuning of our operations.

Beyond the agenda set by our review, the global financial crisis has forced us, likeother academic institutions, particularly those financed substantially from endow-ment, to look hard at all aspects of our operations to see where costs can be reducedwithout any appreciable damage to the academic life of the Institute. The Institutedepends on its endowment for eighty percent of its core operating expenses and,although our investments have fared better than those of many comparable institu-tions, losses have been substantial and we have had to work hard to reduce expen-diture while leaving the life and work of the Institute as little affected as possible.In addition to the very significant savings that we have made in this way, the Insti-tute’s Trustees have been extremely generous in establishing a support fund for theInstitute’s operating budget, aimed at providing $30 million over the three years

2009–2012. The Institute is enormously indebted to them.Over the last five years, we have been pursuing a quiet campaign to raise

resources and the sums received and pledged now total $130 million. Althoughthese donations of more than $25 million a year demonstrate the value that isplaced on the Institute and its mission, further significant additions to endowments,through both contributions and investment performance, will be necessary for theInstitute to continue to provide an environment of the highest quality for researchto so many scholars and scientists.

The founding Director of the Institute, Abraham Flexner, not only articulatedthe mission of the Institute with remarkable prescience, he also understood theimportance of donations to support it: “There has been in recent years a very dis-tinct tendency toward the giving of sums, large and small, on specific conditions orfor the promotion of specific ends. . . . Our universities have grown great not by rea-son of the special funds that they possess but because of increasing endowments, theincome of which can be deflected from one individual to another, from one subjectto another, as time goes on.”

Flexner began by specifying that the Institute should be “small and plastic” andtwo decades later Robert Oppenheimer observed that “if we get big we will spoileverything, because the kind of intimacy that is possible in a place of this size is hardto maintain in a place ten times as big.” Echoing these thoughts, the DecadalReview cautioned that any argument for growth must be weighed against its adverseconsequences. No substantive growth is planned for the Institute over the comingdecade, but it is essential that we work to secure the financial basis of the Institute,and, if possible, to find the resources to enable us to undertake the developmentsrecommended by the Decadal Review. We are always deeply grateful to the individ-uals, foundations, and organizations that provide us with the funding flexibility toact quickly to take advantage of opportunities to attract outstanding scholars to theInstitute to further its aim of fostering fundamental research.

— Peter Goddard

Harold T. Shapiro Elected to the Boardof Trustees

Letter from the Director

Harold Shapiro

A Community of Scholars

Since its founding in 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study has remained, in thewords of its founding Director Abraham Flexner, “small and plastic.” While its influ-ence, through the achievements of its Faculty and Members and through the new insti-tutions it has inspired, has been wide and profound, the Institute retains the intimacy andfocus envisioned by its founders. It is, in its very essence, a community of scholars, boththose who are here now, and more broadly, all who have benefited from membership.

In its eightieth year, the Institute is endeavoring to create an online presence for thiscommunity at www.ias.edu/people/cos, first with the posting of a comprehensive list ofscholars formally associated with the Institute throughout its history, and subsequently,through the sharing of biographical and bibliographical information that will bepublished for the Institute community beginning in March.

What began with twenty-three Members invited to the School of Mathematics in1933 has grown to include more than seven thousand historians, mathematicians,physicists, and social scientists throughout the world that now make up the Institutecommunity. Common among these scholars is the experience of benefiting from Flexn-er’s prescient view that the research that has the most profound impact on knowledgeand understanding, and so often that which ultimately has the most profound impacton everyday life, is that driven by curiosity rather than immediate application.

Individually, the scholars and scientists who have spent time at the Institute havebeen remarkably prolific; collectively, they have literally changed the world and ourunderstanding of it. In every decade, from every region of the world, preeminent schol-ars and those who would become so have come to the Institute to expand the frontiersof knowledge. From Albert Einstein to the renowned Faculty who lead the Institutetoday, the Faculty and Members of the Institute throughout its history represent a con-tinuum of remarkable intellectual achievement and commitment. In developing an

online update to the 1930–80 publication A Community ofScholars, the Institute aims to provide a useful and

important record of the intellectual progress ofour time as well as a way for former and currentscholars to continue their contact with theInstitute and with each other.

In early 2010, former scholars affiliatedwith the Institute will receive letters fromthe Director, Peter Goddard, that describethe online project and provide instructionsfor submitting biographical and biblio-graphical information via an online form.The hope is that scholars will submit this

information by March 1. Should you havequestions regarding A Community of Scholars,

please contact cos@ias.edu. �

3

CLIFFMOORE

BENTLEYDREZNER

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/21/09 11:31 AM Page 3

before the onset of the respiratory illness.The analysis of data relating to the first

cases, released on April 21 by the Centers forDisease Control and Prevention, indicated thatthe respiratory illness was caused by an influen-za virus, similar to the H1N1 viruses that werecirculating in pigs in North America. Geneti-cally and antigenically, swine H1N1 virusesare sufficiently different from human seasonalviruses, making vaccination or previous expo-sure to seasonal viruses unlikely to provideprotection. In addition, none of those infectedseemed to have been in proximity to pigs, sug-gesting that the emergent virus was able totransmit from human to human. The same swineorigin H1N1 influenza virus was isolated inspecimens from patients in Mexico. In contrastto the seasonal influenza, the new virus afflic-ted young and healthy adults preferentially.

At the end of April, it was clear that a novelinfluenza virus was spreading in North Americafrom human-to-human transmission, causingfebrile respiratory illness, and in some cases, pneu-monia and death. Mexican authorities reactedenergetically by canceling classes and publicevents. In April, the World Health Organization(WHO) issued an alert that the new strain had pandemic potential. By April 28, mildcases were reported in Canada, Spain, Israel, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand.On June 11, WHO officially declared the first pandemic of the twenty-first century.

Influenza A viruses, including seasonal and pandemic H1N1 viruses, are RNA virus-es with an enormous capacity for evolving and diversifying. The size of a human genome

is three billion bases, with coding for morethan twenty thousand genes. We make a fewcopies of ourselves (our children) every twentyto thirty years, and these copies are very simi-lar to us (the mutation rate in humans is 10-8per replication per base). In contrast, RNAviruses, like flu or HIV, are very small (10,000bases and only 10 genes), produce millions ofcopies every day, and their mutation rate isfour orders of magnitude higher that humans.Humans and RNA viruses demonstrate two dis-tinct strategies that evolution has followed:humans produce a small number of high-fidelitycopies, while RNA viruses produce an enor-mous quantity of lousy copies. But despite theirapparent simplicity, with only ten proteins,these viruses are able to hijack and use thecomplex machinery of the cell.

In addition to mutations, influenza virusespresent another method of evolution calledreassortment. The flu genome is made of eightdifferent pieces, called segments. When twodifferent viruses co-infect the same cell, theycan produce a progeny containing the geneticmaterial of both parental strains. This process isat the heart of pandemics, when novel viruses

generated by reassortment are able to transmit from human to human.The recent H1N1 virus arose as a complicated reassortment process whose story is

still not fully elucidated. By comparing the new virus to the 10,000 different genomesthat have been collected and sequenced since 1918, we are able to trace back its

4

Raúl Rabadán was a particle physics Member in theSchool of Natural Sciences from 2003–06 and abiology Member from 2006–08. His Membershipwas supported by Trustee Martin A. Chooljian andhis wife Helen in 2007–08.

Rabadán, now Assistant Professor in theDepartment of Biomedical Informatics and in theCenter for Computational Biology and Bioinfor-matics at the Columbia University College ofPhysicians and Surgeons, recently led a group ofresearchers that studied the evolution of influenzaviruses and the origins of pandemics by analyzinglarge datasets containing genomic information.After the first news of the H1N1 epidem-ic outbreak, the group worked intensely to deci-pher the origins, diversification, and spread of thepandemic and the factors that could contribute tothe virulence of the virus. The results were pub-lished in several journals, including the New Eng-land Journal of Medicine, Public Library of Sci-ence, and Eurosurveillance.

Some of this work on the H1N1 virus was performed in close collaboration with ArnoldLevine, Professor in the School of Natural Sciences. In addition to Rabadán, other mem-bers of the group were: Vladimir Trifonov (former Member in the School of Mathematics,2006–07); Hossein Khaibanian; Benjamin Greenbaum (Eric and Wendy Schmidt Mem-ber in Biology in the School of Natural Sciences, 2008–10); Alexander Solovyov; JosephChan; Oliver Elliott; and Antony Holmes.

Rabadán, whose current interests include developing theoretical and quantitative ways ofunderstanding the evolution of biological systems, in particular viruses and cancer, describeshis experience at the Institute and his decision to pursue biological research.

I arrived at the Institute for Advanced Study in October 2003, after spending twoyears as a fellow at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Gene-va, Switzerland. For any theoretical physicist the Institute is a mythical place, andthe offer to become a Member presented the possibility of a life-changing experience.I had never been to the Institute, and my only references to the place amounted toa few biographies, physics articles related to my own research, anecdotes from col-leagues, and my own imagination.

Upon my arrival, I found a small institution (compared to the colossal CERN),vibrant and frenetic with intellectual activity, lost in the peace of the woods ofPrinceton. The scientific intensity was extraordinary, and almost immediately, I

started to collaborate with other Members in thephysics group, in astrophysics, and in mathemat-ics. Due to its size, it is almost impossible not tolearn from researchers in other fields at the Insti-tute, which provides a unique opportunity toexpand the horizons of knowledge beyond one’soriginal expertise. I remember many conversa-tions with Faculty and Members, the lunches,the walks around the pond while drinking mycoffee at 3:00 p.m., and the many friends that Ihave kept from my first years at the Institute.

In 2005, I attended some lectures on virusesgiven by Arnold Levine, a Professor in theSchool of Natural Sciences who heads theSimons Center for Systems Biology. Immediate-ly after these lectures, I became fascinated withbiology, and viruses in particular. In my freetime, I enjoyed reading books and articles aboutbiology and interacting with the Members in sys-tems biology. In spite of having the name biolo-

gy in it, the systems biology group is an interdisciplinary team made up mostly ofphysicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists, with only a few biologists, allinterested in obtaining a quantitative understanding of biological problems. WithLevine’s scientific guidance and deep biological insights, in a few months, I was pas-sionately absorbed in biology, trying to disentangle evolutionary patterns in RNAviruses, in particular HIV and influenza. It became clear to me that biology was expe-riencing a revolutionary expansion, with large amounts of unexplored data and theurgent need for theoretical understanding.

At some point, I found myself faced with the dilemma of whether to continue mywork in physics in a research position in my native country, Spain, or to accept anoffer to stay another three years as an IAS Member in systems biology. Althoughchanging my field of research was obviously risky from a career point of view, I wasseduced by the research problems, the approach, and the dynamics of the systemsbiology group at the Institute.

When Columbia University offered me the possibility of starting a new group in2008, I could not find a better model than the one I experienced at the Institute. Iput together an interdisciplinary team with researchers from physics, astrophysics,computer science, engineering, medicine, and other fields, with the common aimof solving real and important biological problems. I have maintained many collab-orative relationships at the Institute, and it is always a pleasure to return and seefamiliar and new faces. �

Expanding the Horizons of Knowledge Beyond One’s Original Expertise

H1N1 (Continued from page 1)

The phylogenetic structure of the HA gene of influenza A, from the 1918 Spanishinfluenza pandemic through the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Viruses isolated in swine areindicated by purple lines, those in humans by blue lines, and those in birds by green lines.

Raúl Rabadán (sitting, to right) with Professor Arnold Levine (far left), BenjaminGreenbaum (standing), and Nina Bhardwaj (far right), a visiting lecturer, priorto a Simons Center for Systems Biology seminar

(Continued on page 8)

CLIFFMOORE

BIR

KHÄUSER

ADVANCESIN

INFE

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USDISEASES/SPRIN

GER

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Talking PointsFrom and About the Institute Community

Pierre first started visiting Moscow in the 1970s, deep inthe USSR era; at the time, such visits from a foreignmathematician, while not expressly forbidden, were quitenon-trivial to arrange, and all the more valuable for that.He has continued to keep in touch with Moscow mathe-maticians ever since. . . . In 2004 Pierre received the Balzanprize, one of the most distinguished scientific prizes inthe world. Pierre decided to spend it “for the benefit of thestruggling Russian school of mathematics.” Thus the year-ly “Pierre Deligne Contest for Young Mathematicians”was started. . . . During the past four years, sixteen Delignefellowships have been awarded. Now Pierre intends tocontinue the contest by using his personal funds. It is hardto overestimate the debt of gratitude we owe Pierre.

––“A Tribute to PIERRE DELIGNE” [ProfessorEmeritus in the School of Mathematics], MoscowMathematical Journal, January–March 2009

I am very skeptical about all the pronouncements that aremade by the experts. I know how completely uncertainthe subject is. But I don’t claim to be an expert myself, soI won’t argue with anybody about details. And I am cer-tainly not a spokesman for the opponents of the prevailingdogmas. I haven’t given much time to it and I don’t pre-tend to know what the real answers are. What I know forsure is that most of the people who make pronouncementsdon’t know, either.

––FREEMAN DYSON, Professor Emeritus in the Schoolof Natural Sciences, giving his perspective on global warming

on The Charlie Rose Show, August 14, 2009

From the very beginning of its existence, the Muslim worldpracticed and developed an elaborate legal system meant tocontrol and to judge all aspects of life . . . This system,known as sharia, was based on the Qur’an, an immutabledivine revelation, and the hadith, a huge body of actions andstatements attributed to the Prophet, whose authenticity—and reliability for believers—was discussed for centuries. . . .Although a consensus was established on many issues, andwas often adopted by the legal systems of Muslim states inour times, this consensus was not total or universal. Withvariations that arouse the passions of modern historians andpoliticians, the opinions and judgments of this tradition oflegal interpretation can, in theory at least, range fromabsolute and constant to near-anarchical and open-ended.

––OLEG GRABAR, Professor Emeritus in theSchool of Historical Studies, in “Seeing and Believing:The Image of the Prophet in Islam—the Real Story,”

The New Republic, November 4, 2009

I remember going into Professor Habicht’s office—he alwayshad time no matter how busy he was––and saying “Howwould you like it if IG II2 2971 dates to around 250 insteadof 314?” He took his copy of Inscriptiones Graecae off theshelf to take a look at the text, knotted his brow a bit, andsaid he’d think about it. Back to my office I went. I did notexpect to hear anything for a day or two, as I had interruptedhim in the midst of his work. Was I ever mistaken! Aboutone half hour later I opened my door to his knock. There hestood a broad grin on his face, positively beaming. “Perfect,”he said and left me to figure it out. Of course, he later kindlyread what I wrote and helped me tremendously with it.

––STEPHEN V. TRACY, current Visitor and former Memberin the School of Historical Studies, in Attika Epigraphika,

a volume of the proceedings of an epigraphic conferenceheld in honor of CHRISTIAN HABICHT, Professor

Emeritus in the School of Historical Studies

The point of just war theory is to regulate warfare, to limitits occasions, and to regulate its conduct and legitimatescope. Wars between states should never be total warsbetween nations or peoples. Whatever happens to the twoarmies involved, whichever one wins or loses, whatever thenature of the battles or the extent of the casualties, the twonations, the two peoples, must be functioning communitiesat the war’s end. The war cannot be a war of exterminationor ethnic cleansing. And what is true for states is also truefor state-like political bodies such as Hamas and Hezbollah,whether they practice terrorism or not. The people theyrepresent or claim to represent are a people like any other.

––AVISHAI MARGALIT, George F. Kennan Professor in theSchool of Historical Studies, and MICHAEL WALZER, Professor

Emeritus in the School of Social Science, in “Israel: Civilians andCombatants,” The New York Review of Books, May 14, 2009

BY PETER CLARKE

When I came to the Institute as a Director’s Visitorin January 2009, I had very little idea of what toexpect, but at least I knew what I expected to be work-ing on during the two months of my stay. This is thecandid story of how my expectations were defeated—much to my own benefit and, I hope, to the credit ofthe Institute as well.As a historian of modern Britain, I generally divide

my time these days between Cambridge, England,where I am happy to revisit my old university and itslibraries, and Pender Island, British Columbia, wherethe best library in my field is in the house that my wifeDr. Maria Tippett and I have built there. Living for mostof the year on a remote island off the west coast ofCanada, I already had calm and tranquil surroundingsfor writing. In coming to Princeton, I looked forward toexploiting the rich resources for research providedunder the auspices of the Institute—and in this I wasnot disappointed.But within a week or two of my arrival, I had to con-

fess to the Director that I was not in fact working onChurchill and the concept of the English-speaking peo-ples, the topic that I had originally proposed. PeterGoddard did not turn a hair, immediately assuring methat this was in the best traditions of the Institute. Thisprovided not only encouragement but a daunting chal-lenge. True, I gladly fulfilled a commitment to give aFriends Forum on February 4 on “The Two Careers ofWinston S. Churchill,” which explored the seriousnessof Churchill’s commitment—and earnings—as a writer.But my attention was mainly turned in another direc-tion, towards financial problems on a larger scale thanthose of Churchill’s tax returns.It was the time of the inauguration of a new presi-

dent in Washington, which we watched, with col-leagues and with excitement, on the television link-upprovided in Wolfensohn Hall. These were early days ofinnocence in the Obama presidency, promising hopeand audacity. Both were to be needed in confronting aserious economic crisis. Moreover, the debate overappropriate responses to it inevitably aroused echoes fora historian of the circumstances in which PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt had taken office seventy-sixyears previously, inaugurating the New Deal with hismessage that there was nothing to fear but fear itself.Whether this was an appropriate response to the GreatDepression of the 1930s, whether the thinking behindthe New Deal was consistent or correct, whether it rep-resented an early test for a Keynesian stimulus strategy,were historical questions that were suddenly given anew twist.Academic economists and historians, marooned in

what is usually derided as their ivory tower, have long

made a frugal living out of debating such issues. In thetower at Princeton, just up the road, one economistdecided to republish his collected academic articlesabout ten years ago. “I guess I am a Great Depressionbuff, the same way people are Civil War buffs,” he wrotein the preface, and barely a dog barked as the unworldlyman confessed to his harmless little hobby. “I haveenjoyed studying the Great Depression because it is afascinating event at a pivotal time in modern history,”he continued. “How convenient for me, then, profes-sionally speaking, that there is also so much to learnfrom the Depression about the workings of the economy.”In January 2009, I sensed my new project in much

the same terms as Ben Bernanke (for it was he ofcourse). And while it has not yet given me the samedegree of professional advancement and job opportuni-ties, I am well pleased that I decided to write an acces-sible account of the thinking of John Maynard Keynesand of the reception of his ideas. At any rate, I recent-ly had the pleasure of presenting the Director with acopy of my book, Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return ofthe 20th Century’s Most Influential Economist, publishedby Bloomsbury in London in September and by Blooms-bury Press in New York in October, on the anniversaryof the Great Crash of 1929.Thus the foundations for this book were laid at the

Institute, not only through the availability of researchfacilities but through the intellectual stimulation ofmany informal discussions with other scholars. Theirreactions to news of what I was doing helped me framequestions that my book sought to answer—especiallywhy the thinking of an economist who died more thansixty years ago should continue to have such relevancefor us today. As soon as I got back to Pender Island atthe end of February, I began the eleven weeks of actu-al writing. I like to think that I was wound up like acoiled spring in releasing the energy that had beenstored up at the Institute—or perhaps this metaphorsimply reveals continuing deficiencies in my under-standing of physics that further conversations overlunch might have remedied. �

5

A Funny Thing Happened toMe on theWay to the Institute

John Maynard KeynesJohn Maynard Keynes was inconsistent far less often than is alleged. But hewas guilty of changing his mind––usually for the better. What reason do wehave for supposing that he would have denied us similar license? In policy,we are surely not wrong, more than seventy years after his General Theory,to improvise particular measures appropriate to our own times. Keynes’sname is thus rightly invoked to license fresh approaches to the novel eco-nomic difficulties of our own era––to tackle them actively rather than takerefuge in inert doctrinal purity.It is indeed Keynesian to applaud government for trying something, and

on a large scale too, when faced with obvious market failure. And the yard-stick that Keynes introduced for assessing the costs is still valid: whetherthe economy itself can be expanded by such measures, generating the veryresources that finance the initial stimulus. That is what justifies governmentaction, not only for reasons of short-term expediency, but also in the long run.

––Peter Clarke in Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century’sMost Influential Economist (Bloomsbury Press, 2009)

Peter Clarke, Emeritus Professor of Modern BritishHistory in the University of Cambridge and formerlyMaster of Trinity Hall, was a Director’s Visitor at theInstitute in spring 2009. He is the author of manybooks, including The Last Thousand Days of theBritish Empire (Bloomsbury Press, 2008); TheKeynesian Revolution in the Making, 1924–36(Clarendon Press, 1988); and the final volume ofThe Penguin History of Britain, Hope and Glory,Britain 1900–2000 (Penguin Books, 2004).

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 5

BY GEORGE DYSON

It was the Lenni Lenape! It was the tribes of the LenniLenape! The sun rose from water that was salt, and setin water that was sweet, and never hid himself fromtheir eyes . . . It was but yesterday that the children ofthe Lenape were masters of the world.

— James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

New Jersey’s original inhabitants, the LenniLenape (“Men of Men”) abandoned the inte-rior in summer and headed either to the Jerseyshores or to encampments on the estuaries ofDelaware Bay. “From June to this present month,August,” reported William Penn (1644–1718)during his first summer on the Delaware in 1683,“we have had extraordinary heats.”Penn landed in Delaware Bay on October 27,

1682, after a passage (from Deal, England) of fifty-nine days aboard theWelcome during which small-pox broke out and thirty-one of his ninety-ninefellow colonists died. Penn, who had survivedsmallpox at the age of three, ministered to the sickduring the voyage and arrived in excellent health.The Lenape met the newcomers with diplomacy,but the colonists had technology and immunity on theirside. “What is thematter with us Indians,” Chief Tenoughan,of the Schuykill River, asked William Penn, “that weare thus sick in our own Air, and these Strangers well?”Following his Restoration in 1660, Charles II of Eng-

land had challenged the Dutch claims to North America,granting the entire territory between Virginia and NewFrance to his brother, the Duke of York (later James II), in1664. The territory was named New York, and a portionof it, between the Delaware and Hudson rivers, wasnamed New Jersey, with the west half (bordering theDelaware River and Delaware Bay) assigned to LordBerkeley and the east half (bordering the Hudson Riverand the Atlantic Ocean) assigned to Sir John Carteret.In 1675, Lord Berkeley sold his interest in West New

Jersey for £1,000 to John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge,two Quakers whose subsequent dispute over the propertywas referred for arbitration to William Penn. Fenwicksailed for America, while Byllynge fell into debt and even-tually transferred his interest to a group of creditors includ-ing Penn, who also purchased an interest in East NewJersey (including much of what would become Prince-ton) at auction in 1682 for £3,400 from Carteret’s estate.William Penn was the rebel-

lious son of Admiral Sir WilliamPenn (1621–70), who led theEnglish fleet in two wars againstthe Dutch and captured Jamaicafor Cromwell in 1655. Sent toOxford at age fifteen and soonexpelled, the younger Penn tookup with the Quakers, a noncon-formist sect, and was imprisonedseven times. Admiral Penn diedin 1670, leaving his son to man-age his estate, including £16,000owed to it by the Crown. Officially£11,000 in “victualling expenses,”plus interest, rumors lingered thatthe admiral had covered the kingfor a gambling debt.Penn petitioned the king, in

1680, for a settlement of this debt,proposing the Crown grant him “atract of land in America, lying north of Maryland, on theeast bounded with Delaware River, on the west, limited asMaryland is, and northward to extend as far as plantable,which is altogether Indian.” Charles and James said yes—resolving the debt, and exporting one of the ringleaders ofa troublesome religious sect. The colony of Pennsylvania,

with its capital Philadelphia, was the result.To the west of Pennsylvania lay open wilderness, while

to the east the wilds of New Jersey began to be squeezedbetween two growing populations centered uponPhiladelphia and New York. The most direct connectionbetween the two settlements was overland across the“waist” of New Jersey, between the head of navigation onthe Delaware River (near present-day Trenton, upstreamfrom Philadelphia) and the head of navigation on theRaritan River (near present-day New Brunswick,upstream from New York). This well-worn Lenni Lenapefootpath became, in succession, a trail passable by horses,a wagon road, the “King’s Highway” for stagecoaches,and finally State Routes 27 and 206.In 1683, a settler named Henry Greenland opened a

tavern near the midpoint of the wagon road, and aroundthis nucleus the village of Prince-Town began to form.The proprietors of East and West New Jersey met atGreenland’s Tavern in 1683 to decide their commonboundary (marked by the present-day Province LineRoad) and thus put Princeton on the map. The NassauTavern (and Nassau Inn), successor to Greenland’s Tav-ern, is still where coaches drop off travelers and Princeton

University houses its guests.Meanwhile, a small group of

Quakers were seeking to distancethemselves as far as possible fromthe increasingly secular influ-ences of Philadelphia and NewYork. Halfway between the Rari-tan and the Delaware, and slight-ly to the south of the overlandtrail, was a small stream namedWapowog by the Lenape, flow-ing through land that was takenup in 1693, as his share of theoriginal grant to the proprietorsof East New Jersey, by WilliamPenn. Six close-knit Quakerfamilies, with Penn as an absen-tee partner, founded a colonyhere in 1696, and named itStony Brook. Instead of a tavern,they built a Quaker Meeting

House, where Friends congregate, at the edge of theInstitute Woods, to this day.The patriarchs of these families were Benjamin

Clarke, William Olden, Joseph Worth, John Hornor,Richard Stockton, and Benjamin Fitz Randolph, withStockton becoming the largest landowner thanks to 5,500

acres purchased for £900 in 1701 from WilliamPenn (who reserved 1,050 acres “as to saidWilliam Penn shall seem meet and convenient”for himself). Benjamin Clarke purchased 1,200acres between Stony Brook, the Province Line,the present Stockton Street, and the presentSpringdale Road, in 1696, conveying 400 acres(including the site of the Institute for AdvancedStudy) to his brother-in-law, William Olden,and deeding 9.6 acres in trust for the QuakerMeeting House and Cemetery in 1709.When the College of New Jersey (established

by Presbyterians) was moved from Newark toPrinceton in 1752, John Stockton and JohnHorner, who put up a £1,000 bond and provided 10acres of cleared land and 200 acres of woods, werecareful to site the futureUniversity near the tavern,on the main road. When Abraham Flexner,Oswald Veblen, and the Bambergers selected alocation for the Institute, they chose OldenFarm, near the meeting house on Stony Brook.It took more than five years for the founders

to reach agreement—not only on a specific site,but on whether the Institute should purchaseland or not. “The way to reform higher education

in the United States is to pay generous salaries and thenuse any sort of makeshift in the way of buildings,” arguedFlexner in 1932.1 Four years later, after conceding to thepurchase of Olden Farm, Flexner was still complaining toVeblen that “I would far rather rent additional floor spacein 20 Nassau Street and get our minds so full of the pur-poses for which we exist that we will all become relative-ly indifferent to buildings and grounds.” 2

Louis Bamberger, although approving the purchase,admitted to Flexner that “some of our coworkers in themanagement of the Institute were inclined to rush alongwith more haste than wisdom,” and noted that “Mrs.Fuld has repeatedly commented on a policy of acquiringso much land for an institution that proclaimed not sizebut highest standards.” 3 Flexner, in return, warned theBambergers, via their legal counsel and founding TrusteeHerbert Maass, that Veblen “is a most excellent person,but the word ‘building’ or ‘farm’ has an intoxicatingeffect upon him.” 4

Veblen, an avid outdoorsman who, after winning oneprize in sharpshooting and another prize in math, hadtaken time off from his undergraduate studies to traveldown the Iowa and Mississippi rivers in the style ofHuckleberry Finn, found the combination of the Bam-berger fortune and the depressed land prices of the 1930sa potent mix. “There is no educational institution in theUnited States which has not in the beginning made themistake of acquiring too little rather than too muchland,” he wrote to Flexner, urging the acquisition of “asufficiently large plot of land, which would thus be keptfree from objectionable intruders.” 5

The latter argument had the desired effect. “I have itin mind now to go down to Princeton quietly for a weekor so for the purpose of familiarizing myself with thegeneral situation, for that may help us in our finalchoice,” Flexner reported in October 1932. “I shouldlike to be away from undergraduate activities and closeto graduate activities.” 6

There was no turning back, once word leaked outthat the Institute was looking for a home. “The factthat we propose to locate in the vicinity of Princeton isnow a matter of public knowledge to such an extentthat, I believe, we are being made the victim of a dis-

6

The Tavern and the Meeting HouseGeorge Dyson Explains How Princeton University Began with a Tavern and the Institute Began with a Meeting House

East and West New Jersey in 1696

Prince-Town circa 1781

George Dyson, a historian of science and technologyand son of Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus in theSchool of Natural Sciences, is a former Director’s Vis-itor (2002–03) who is writing a history of the IASElectronic Computer Project (1945–58).

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 6

tinct firming up in prices, and that we had betterattempt to come to an early decision,” Maass advisedFlexner in November 1932.7

Veblen jumped at the chance. “If we are going to haveinflation, would it not be well to speed up the land ques-tion?” he argued. “At least two of the proposed sites seemgood to me.” 8 By 1936 some 256 acres had been pur-chased for a total of $290,000.9 The acquisitions includ-ed the 200-acre Olden Farm, purchased after lengthynegotiations for $175,000. This included OldenManor—the former William Olden house and now the Director’sresidence—as well as a cluster of farm workers’ houses atthe end of Olden Lane, and a large, working barn.“I am, as you and Mrs. Fuld are, very glad that we have

acquired a site, though I think it would be prudent for thepresent to keep the matter quiet,” Flexner wrote to Bam-berger in October 1935. “Though I do not wish to criticizeeither Mr. Maass or Professor Veblen, I think there issome danger that they will both be too enthusiastic aboutthe acquisition of additional land.” 10 The Bambergersresponded, as Maass reported to Flexner in December, by“[playing] Santa Claus by paying for the land.” 11

Veblen was not to be constrained. Over the next fewyears, he drove a series of bargains with depression-strapped landowners to extend the Institute’s holdings toa total of 610 acres, including the Institute Woods. “Ihave walked over the new property of the Institute sever-al times since there has been a hard crust on top of thesnow,” he reported in early 1936. “This enables one toexplore the woods down near the brook much better thanone will be able to after the ground gets soft again.” 12

Among the properties acquired was theMaxwell estate,to the west of Olden Farm, extending fromMercer Streettoward Stony Brook. “The Maxwell House is a compos-ite,” noted the Committee on Buildings and Grounds.“The front of the house was the front of old St. George’sHall which stood at 13th and Arch Streets, Philadelphia.The Corinthian columns in the halls came from a row ofhouses built by John Jacob Astor at Broadway and 11thStreet, New York. The Italian marble mantel in thedrawing room came from the home of A. T. Stewart, andthe carved wooden mantel in the library from the diningroom of J. P. Morgan, the chandelier from a chateau inFrance, etc. The pipe organ was installed in 1914.” 13

The purchase of the remainder of the Maxwell estate(complicated, as it remains today, by its status as a his-toric battlefield) was concluded by Frank Aydelotte,

Flexner’s successor, in 1945. “I think this is the psycho-logical moment to close the deal,” Aydelotte reported toMaass in September 1945. “With this tract in our pos-session, the Institute will have one of the finest pieces ofeducational real estate that I know of anywhere.” 14

Aydelotte was right. The Institute’s holdings nowextended from the Graduate College to the QuakerMeeting House on Stony Brook, and included not onlythese fields and woodlands, but their Quaker legacy, anda direct link to the original inhabitants, via WilliamPenn. “I find them . . . of a deep natural sagacity,” Pennwrote to his friend Robert Boyle of the Royal Society,after his first tour of the Lenni Lenape country in 1683.“The low dispensation of the poor Indian out shines thelives of those Christians, that pretend an higher.”While still in England, Penn had drafted a constitu-

tion for the new colony, issued in 1676 as the “Conces-sions and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders,and Inhabitants of the Province of West New Jersey.”Exactly one hundred years before the Declaration ofIndependence, this document established a representa-tive democracy with freedom of religion and assembly,trial by jury, economic liberty, and other principles thatwould later be incorporated into the Constitution of theUnited States. Richard Stockton and JohnWitherspoon,both children of the Stony Brook settlement, were sign-ers of the Declaration of Independence, and followingthe Revolutionary War the Continental Congress metfrom June to November 1783 in Princeton at NassauHall. On October 8, a delegation representing five hun-dred Quakers appeared before Congress in Princeton,

“soliciting the Christian interposition of Congress, forthe discouragement and prevention of the slave trade.”While negotiations for the purchase of Olden Farm

were underway, the Bambergers expressed their hopethat the Institute’s School of Economics and Politicswould “contribute not only to a knowledge of these sub-jects but ultimately to the cause of social justice whichwe have deeply at heart.” 15

This objective, as well as its physical location, theInstitute owes to William Penn. �

This season’s Edward T. Cone Concert Series, knownas “The Harmonic Series,” is the first to be pre-sented under composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel,who joined the Institute as Artist-in-Residence in July.Offering music from classical to cabaret, from virtuosoviolin to jazz piano, the season “brings together aneclectic mix of performers, styles, and composers,” saysBermel, who recently received a Grammy nominationfor his performance in his album Voices (BMOP/sound,2009). “We hope to engage and challenge our audience’sperceptions of classical and contemporary music.”The series opened on October 16 and 17 with Bermel

on clarinet and Christopher Taylor on piano performingworks by Brahms, Milhaud, Leonard Bernstein, Seb-astian Currier, Paul Moravec, and Bermel, who wasrepresented by three works—SchiZm, Thracian Sketches,and Turning.On December 4 and 5, Pulitzer Prize–winning com-

poser and pianist William Bolcom, bass/baritone KevinDeas, violinist Timothy Fain, mezzo-soprano CarlaJablonski, cellist Joshua Roman, pianist HowardWatkins, and mezzo-soprano Joan Morris performed aselection of sonatas and songs composed by Bolcom.The concert series will continue in the second term

with performances by virtuoso violinist Midori andpianist Charles Abramovic on January 15 and 16, play-ing music by John Adams, Toshio Hosokawa, JamesMacMillan, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Huw Watkins.The season will conclude with a world premiere duo-

recital by jazz pianists Vijay Iyer and Craig Taborn onMarch 19 and 20. All concerts are held at 8:00 p.m. inWolfensohn Hall.Throughout the season, Bermel is organizing a series

of concert talks to accompany the performances. Thefirst talks were given in October by Anthony Tommasini,chief music critic of the New York Times.In November, Bermel also hosted a writer’s talk fea-

turing Steve Bodow, head writer and supervising pro-ducer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.For more information about the Artist-in-Residence

program and the Edward T. Cone Concert Series, visitwww.ias.edu/air. �

7

The Edward T. Cone Concert Series: An Eclectic Mix of Performances

The local classical radio station WWFM is broadcastinga new series called “Music from the Institute forAdvanced Study,” cohosted by Artist-in-Residence DerekBermel. In addition to featuring current concerts in theEdward T. Cone Concert Series, the program featuresmusic from past Artist-in-Residence performances.

The broadcast airs between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m.on the last Saturday of each month. For more infor-mation, please visit www.wwfm.org.

Artist-in-Residence Derek Bermel with pianist Christopher Taylor

The route between Trenton and New Brunswick in 1777

The following materials in the Institute’s Shelby Whiteand Leon Levy Archives Center were consulted in thewriting of this article:

1 Flexner to Bamberger, December 1, 19322 Flexner to Veblen, January 6, 19373 Bamberger to Flexner, October 29, 19354 Flexner to Maass, December 15, 19375 Veblen to Flexner, April 12, 19346 Flexner to Maass, October 18, 19327 Maass to Flexner, November 9, 19328 Veblen to Flexner, March 13, 19339 Maass, Trustees’ Minutes, April 13, 193610 Flexner to Bamberger, October 28, 193511 Flexner to Bamberger, December 19, 193512 Veblen to Aydelotte, February 13, 193613 Conversation on the Maxwell Property, September 16 and

17, 1940 (Beatrice Stern files, Buildings and Grounds)14 Frank Aydelotte, Memorandum for Herbert H. Maass,

September 7, 194515 Louis Bamberger to the Trustees, April 23, 1934

CLIFFMOORE

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challenge was particularly excit-ing. It might sound strange, but itis a question one does not thinkof very often: what is specific toan artist, and how can one sum-marize his or her achievement? Inthe case of Picasso, this is quite aconundrum, for the two aspects ofhis production that are absolutelyunique are its quantity and itsdiversity.No artist, throughout the

entire history of world art, isknown to have produced as manyworks as Picasso—and this with-out the help of any assistant (asopposed to Rubens’s army ofapprentices working for him inhis studio, for example). The onlytime he requested any help waswhen he wanted to learn a tech-nique (in the late twenties heasked his friend Julio Gonzaleshow to weld metal, in the earlyfifties he asked a potter how towork a wheel); as soon as he hadmastered the technique in ques-tion, he would retreat into the solitude of his studio and,more often than not, find ways to subvert its conven-tions. If one counts everything, all of his drawings andsketches, one can estimate that Picasso’s output is wellabove 30,000 works—which is to say that no matterhow large an exhibition could be, it would only includea minute proportion of his production.With this in mind, I chose to concentrate on the

second unparalleled characteristic of Picasso’s work, itsastonishing heterogeneity—which is the main reason Ifocused on the years 1917–37, the most diverse periodof his career. Many artists develop several distinct stylesthroughout their life, but sequentially, one at a time,moving forward without return—as did Picasso himselfat the beginning of his career (his Blue Period was fol-lowed by a Rose Period, then Cubism, itself divided intoseveral chronological phases). But starting timidly in1915–16 and then in full force during his sojourn inRome, in February through May 1917, Picasso devel-oped a new attitude that would remain an essentialfeature of his aesthetics. From then on, he would neverabandon anything; he would always invent new stylesbut no longer discard old ones. Perhaps under the spellof the classical monuments and sculptures of antiqueRome, or the paintings he saw in Pompei and Naples,Picasso discarded any idea of “evolution” and “progress.”Over the years he would build a phenomenal arsenal offorms and approaches, and feel free to summon any oneof them any time he wished, any time he saw fit.There is an obvious playfulness in the way Picasso

constantly shifted his artistic identity when leastexpected—and the title of the show, “Picasso Harle-quin,” was meant to reflect that: he was like Harlequin,a character with whom he identified all his life and ofwhom he drew and painted many versions in various,often incompatible, styles. Like Harlequin, he couldbecome anything he wanted, put on any mask, take out

any card from his sleeve. He could be several artists atonce. Thus on the same day or week or month, he couldoffer a cubist, a neoclassical and a surrealist version ofthe same subject, for example, and he would relish insuch clashes of incompatible manners. The hundred

etchings of the Suite Vollard,which were included in the show,provide a perfect case in point(most of the plates are dated, so itis particularly easy to observe therapidity of his identity switches).To signal that this distinctiveaspect of Picasso’s work was thetopic of the show, I placed at itsvery entrance two paintings thathave only in common the factthat they are his, even thoughthey were made just a few monthsapart—the cubist Italian Woman,painted in Rome in Aprilthrough May 1917, and the neo-classical Harlequin, painted inBarcelona in the early fall of thatyear (to drive the point home Icould have found works that arestrictly contemporary, but theywould not have matched thesheer force of those two toweringsentinels).Picasso was obviously proud of

his work’s multifariousness. How-ever, this should not be confused

with fickleness. He liked to work in series, often stayingwith the same topic for months in a row, and sometimesreturning years later to a series that he felt had not yield-ed all it could. Picasso’s visual memory is indeed spec-tacular. TheWoman in a Hat that Picasso painted in July1934, for example, is directly reminiscent of sketches hemade in the fall and winter of 1912–13; the Head of aHorse he painted in 1937 as a study for Guernica seemsto derive from a sketchbook he filled in fall 1917 whileresting in Barcelona from his exhausting work in Romefor the ballet Parade. Unlike Harlequin, Picasso hada very long attention span, and he was anything butlazy. These are the only two major differences in theircharacter, not enough to renounce the metaphor ofHarlequin’s tricks and costume for Picasso’s prodigiouslyvaried production. �

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PICASSO HARLEQUIN (Continued from page 1)

Yve-Alain Bois, Professor in the School of HistoricalStudies, is a specialist in twentieth-century Europeanand American art and has curated a number ofinfluential exhibitions in the past decade, including“Picasso Harlequin 1917–1937,” which was exhibitedat the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome (October 11,2008–February 8, 2009). He is currently workingon several long-term projects, including a study ofBarnett Newman’s paintings, the catalogue raisonnéof Ellsworth Kelly’s paintings and sculptures, and themodern history of axonometric projection.

Pablo Picasso, Harlequin, 1917Pablo Picasso, Italian Woman, 1917

ancestors. The new virus is related to swine viruses isolated in two continents, NorthAmerica and Eurasia. The North American ancestors were isolated in pigs between1998 and 2002 and were the result of a reassortment between swine, avian, and humanviruses, the so-called triple reassortment at the end of the nineties. The origin of theEurasian ancestors is more mysterious. They were found in Europe in the early nineties,and since then the data is sparse. How, when, and where these two ancestors met isstill an open question, which probably will only be solved with a better worldwidesurveillance system.As previously mentioned, this virus is evolving and diversifying. More than a thou-

sand viruses have been isolated and sequenced around the globe. The viruses from NewYork, Tokyo, Paris, Mexico, Argentina, and other locations show a very similar genomewith subtle differences. By taking all this information into account, we can estimate thatthe most recent common ancestor to the H1N1 viruses that are currently spreading inthe world is very recent, probably from the end of January or the beginning of February

2009, which is compatible to the first reported cases in Mexico and the United States.The viruses from these different locations show a strong geographic correlation, suggest-ing local spread in many different places around the globe, and an increasing diversity.At the moment, the most effective strategy to fight influenza viruses is vaccination.

The first step in the process of creating an influenza vaccine is to choose a virus that wethink will represent the circulating virus in the near future. The high evolutionaryspeed, obtained through mutations and reassortments, is a very successful strategy thatmakes RNA viruses, like flu, very hard to predict. However, there are several lessonsthat we, as a species, are learning, including awareness that basic science provides thebest guidance for implementing effective public health measures. We need an effectiveworldwide system of surveillance for emerging viruses, to map and to identify mutationsthat could confer resistance to drugs or vaccines, to learn how to assess the transmissi-bility of a pathogen in humans, and to identify the molecular factors that determine thevirulence of a pathogen. �

H1N1 (Continued from page 4)

Like Harlequin, he could becomeanything he wanted, put on any mask,

take out any card from his sleeve.He could be several artists at once.Thus on the same day or week ormonth, he could offer a cubist,

a neoclassical and a surrealist versionof the same subject, for example,and he would relish in such clashes

of incompatible manners.

ESTATEOFPABLOPICASSO/ARTISTSRIGHTSSOCIETY,NEWYORK

ESTATEOFPABLOPICASSO/ARTISTSRIGHTSSOCIETY,NEWYORK

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 8

9

The 2009 International Seminar onMathematics Education, a program ofthe Institute for Advanced Study/Park CityMathematics Institute (PCMI), broughttogether teams from Australia, Cambodia,Denmark, Israel, Namibia, Peru, Vietnam,and the United States to discuss the teachingof functions and engage in a broader dialogueon mathematics education.Team members from each country pre-

sented a response to specific questions relatedto teaching functions based on their country’sview of secondary education. Participantsfrom each of the other countries then raisedquestions and discussed the perspectives oftheir own cultures.“The opportunity to work at close quar-

ters with fellow professionals from many dif-ferent countries is a very rare one, and I feelprivileged to have been involved,” saidBarry Kissane, Senior Lecturer in the Schoolof Education at Murdoch University inAustralia, who was among the seminar par-ticipants. “Even those of us fortunate enough to attendinternational conferences do not usually have the chanceto work so closely for such a long period on matters ofcommon interest.”Subtitled “Bridging Policy and Practice,” the Inter-

national Seminar is one of the most significant compo-nents of PCMI. Its intent is to foster conversationsamong different nations about the teaching of mathe-matics. Each year, participants from teams representingseven countries join those from the United States tofocus on a designated concept, how it should be taught,and what teachers require in order to teach it. Participantsalso consider the implications of technology and themathematical knowledge needed by teachers workingwith the subject matter.The International Seminar was introduced in 2001 by

Elaine Wolfensohn and Herb Clemens, then Director ofPCMI and Professor of Mathematics at the University ofUtah, now at the Ohio State University. Elaine Wolfen-sohn, the wife of James Wolfensohn, then Chairman ofthe Institute’s Board of Trustees and now ChairmanEmeritus, became interested in initiating such a programwhile traveling with her husband during his tenure asPresident of the World Bank.“I discovered that among the many needs in the

developing world was the need to improve the teachingof mathematics,” said ElaineWolfensohn, whose Wolfen-sohn Family Foundation and Botwinick-WolfensohnFoundation provide funding for the InternationalSeminar. “During the ten years of Jim’s presidency, Ispent much of my time visiting schools in all regions ofthe world. Since mathematics is an international lang-uage, I always observed the math classes. I visited donor

countries such as Japan and Singapore where math wastaught extraordinarily well. I realized that our Americanhigh school teachers could benefit from learning moreabout what works in other countries and that developedcountries could help those in the developing world toimprove the teaching of math.”

Johnny Lott, Director of the Center for Excellence inTeaching and Learning, Professor of Education andMathematics at the University of Mississippi, and Profes-sor Emeritus in the University of Montana’s Departmentof Mathematical Sciences, began his involvement atPCMI as a participant and became involved in helpingto organize the International Seminar several years ago.“Participants need a working knowledge of English,

and we generally have two representatives from eachcountry. One is typically a university mathematics edu-cator and the other a secondary school teacher. Thisway, we get not the official country view of a subject, butthe individual view,” Lott said.The first night of the program, participants from each

country present a twenty-minute talk on the overallseminar topic. Individual participants then discuss howthe subject can be integrated into his or her country’scurriculum.

Participants are divided into three groupsand work together during the week-long pro-gram to develop briefs that are then madeavailable online for use by mathematics edu-cators around the world. “We try very hard tocome up with an approach that will work inall the participants’ countries,” Lott said.Issues emerging from the conversations at

the 2009 seminar produced briefs, includingTeacher Professional Development in the Teach-ing and Learning of Functions; Assets, and thePitfalls in Using Technology in Teaching andLearning Functions; and The Place of Functionsin the School Mathematics Curriculum. Thesebriefs will appear with previous policy briefsand the proceedings of earlier seminars atPCMI’s online Math Forum (http://math-forum.org/~pcmi/). The 2010 InternationalSeminar will focus on image processing.“The seminar was long enough for us to

get to know each other and understand themany different cultural contexts from whichwe came. This helped us to see our profes-

sional work in a new light,” Kissane said of the 2009seminar. “The diversity of participants was a major rea-son for the success of the seminar, but so was theinspired leadership. In ‘normal’ circumstances, those inless powerful positions do not easily have a voice, nordo those for whom English is not their first language.Both of these impediments to communication weresuccessfully addressed. My participation has been ahighlight of my career.” �

Fostering Conversations about Mathematics among Different Nations

Participants in the 2009 International Seminar on Mathematics Education discussed how theteaching of functions could be integrated into the curriculum in their home countries.

New Director for PCMI

The Institute for Advanced Study/Park CityMathematics Institute (PCMI) is a programof professional development for the mathematicscommunity, including research mathematicians,graduate students, undergraduate students, mathe-matics education researchers, undergraduate faculty,and mathematics teachers at the secondary schoollevel. Richard Hain, Professor of Mathematics atDuke University, took over as Director of PCMI asof September. Hain, whose work focuses on topolo-gy of algebraic varieties, Hodge theory, and moduliof curves, was a Member in the School of Mathe-matics at the Institute in 1985–86 and 1994. Hesucceeds Robert Bryant, Director of the Mathemat-ical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, Cali-fornia, who organized the Undergraduate SummerSchool program from its inception until 2000 andwas named Director of the PCMI program in 2007.“PCMI is a very impressive program, and I am

honored to be its new director,” said Hain. “Itsmany parts are all strong and interact in such a waythat PCMI is greater than the sum of its parts.”PCMI was founded in 1991 as the Regional

Geometry Institute by a consortium of universitiesled by the University of Utah. In 1993, the Institutefor Advanced Study became the sponsoring institu-tion of PCMI, and the first summer session under theInstitute’s auspices was held in 1994. PCMI is affili-ated with the Institute’s School of Mathematics.This year, PCMI received funding from the

Botwinick-Wolfensohn Foundation, the ClayMathematics Institute, the George S. and DeloresDoré Eccles Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Charles L.Jaffin, Math for America, the MathematicalSciences Research Institute, the National ScienceFoundation, the National Security Agency, Eric andWendy Schmidt, and the Wolfensohn FamilyFoundation. The Department of Mathematics atthe University of Utah also provides support.

Professional Development Program for New JerseyMathematics Teachers Seeks Funding for Growth

In 2007, as an outgrowth of the New Jersey Professional Development and Outreach group, PCMI launchedthe Institute for New Jersey Mathematics Teachers (INJMT), a week-long residential program modeledclosely on PCMI’s Secondary School Teachers Program.Participants in INJMT spend an intense week immersed in mathematically based professional development

to enrich their knowledge and confidence. In 2008, INJMT engaged twelve teacher-participants from variousNew Jersey middle and high schools. In 2009, content was added, and a new set of teachers from a widergeographic area of the state participated.With the success of the program, PCMI is seeking funding to establish this New Jersey–based annual program

as a resource for additional New Jersey teachers and schools. A growing base of experienced teacher-leaderswould allow the INJMT summer program to influence teaching practices at the high school level and the under-graduate level, as well as furthering the professional development of New Jersey’s teachers. In this hoped-forexpansion of the INJMT, teams of four or more teachers from a broad range of schools and districts would beencouraged to participate, deepening the potential impact for systemic change.

BARRYKISSANE

“I realized the world had theopportunity to share what works in

the teaching of mathematics.”—Elaine Wolfensohn

S09-01967_Newsletter.qxp:IAS Letter 12/17/09 7:52 AM Page 9

The Institute for Advanced Study is deeply appre-ciative of the support of the Friends, whose annualgifts provide its largest source of unrestricted income.This income allows the Institute the crucial ability, infounding Director Abraham Flexner’s words, to directfunds “from one individual to another, from one subjectto another, as time goes on.”In the 2009 fiscal year, Friends contributed more

than $580,000, making a significant difference during atime when the Institute’s endowment, which provides80 percent of the operating costs for core activities, suf-fered significant losses. During the 2008–09 academicyear, the Friends’ unprecedented support fully fundedfour visiting scientists and scholars at the Institute—oneMember in each of the Schools. In addition, Friends’gifts helped to sustain the Institute’s libraries; support itsoutreach programs, such as the IAS/Park City Mathe-matics Institute, Prospects in Theoretical Physics, andthe Artist-in-Residence program; and leverage funding,providing essential matching dollars for grants from theNational Endowment for the Humanities to the Schoolof Historical Studies.The Institute continues to rely strongly on this gen-

erosity, and this year, Friends have been presented withan extraordinary opportunity to raise additional funds.Martin and Helen Chooljian, longtime Friends of the

Institute, have put forth a challenge grant to matchevery increase in giving and every new Friends contri-bution, up to a total of $100,000. This creates an excel-lent prospect for Friends who have been considering anupgrade to a higher giving level, and it provides animportant stream of unrestricted support that can beused by the Institute where it is needed most. Anyincrease in giving will qualify for the Chooljians’ match,which means that any amount that a Friend contributesabove last year’s gift will be doubled. John Rassweiler,

Chair of the Friends, has taken the lead in meeting thechallenge, increasing his giving to join the Chairman’sCircle from the Director’s Circle, and every member ofthe Friends Executive Committee has pledged toincrease his or her gift. The challenge is being met bycontributions from new members as well, with elevennew Friends joining so far this year.The Chooljians hope that their matching gift will

persuade other Friends to give more than they did lastyear. “Helen and I feel privileged to be able to supportthe Institute’s distinguished community of scholars,”said Marty Chooljian, who is also a member of the Insti-tute’s Board of Trustees. “We hope that, through thischallenge, we are able to encourage others to join us byincreasing their annual gifts. As donors to IAS, westrengthen the Institute’s financial position and togeth-er our contributions help to ensure the Institute’s role asthe world’s leading independent center for research andintellectual inquiry.” �

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An Opportunity and Challenge for the Friends of the Institute

been ruled out. Hence there is a chance that the effectis an indicator of new physics. I personally believe thatif new physics is involved, it is very unlikely to implicateMaxwell’s equations for electromagnetism, becausethese, and their relativistic extension to quantum elec-trodynamics, have been tested to fantastic precision. Iam also skeptical that the flyby anomalies can be attrib-uted to changes in Einstein’s theory of general relativity,which has also been well-tested in the framework ofmetric theories that obey the equivalence principle (in afreely falling elevator, you feel no gravity), and withinthis framework one can show that possible effects are atleast a factor of one hundred too small to be relevant. Sodeviations from gravity would have to take the form of atheory that does not obey Einstein’s equivalence princi-ple, and this too has been tested to great accuracy.This leaves another possibility: effects of dark matter.

We now know that ordinary matter is only a minor com-ponent of the universe; for every gram of ordinary mat-ter, there are five grams of a mysterious “dark matter,”which participates in Newtonian gravitational forces,but is electrically neutral and so does not readily emit orabsorb light (hence the “dark”). So far there are no firmexperimental indications of its properties, beyond whatis inferred from astrophysics and cosmology. The ques-tion I have been investigating is whether dark mattergravitationally bound to the earth could be responsiblefor the flyby anomalies. Could collisions of the space-craft with dark matter near the earth cause the observedvelocity changes?I have written three papers addressing this question.

In the first2, I showed that if there were a dark mattercomponent that underwent an exothermic (energyreleasing) reaction when colliding with a spacecraft pro-ton or neutron, by converting to a lower mass particle,then the spacecraft nucleon would get a “kick” and theobserved velocity increases could result. In this paper, Ialso studied various physical constraints to see whetherthere is an allowed range of dark matter particle massesand interaction cross sections that could also explain themagnitude of the observed flyby anomalies. The answer

is that there is a small window, but it requires dark mat-ter masses much lighter than conventionally assumed inthe standard “cold dark matter” model, and larger