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The Institute for Advanced Study: The First 100 Years
- flukus 10y agoI thought this was going to be about the center for advanced studies: http://www.cascorporation.com/ http://www.cascorporation.com/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Animats 10y agoThe IAS was founded in 1930. 100 years is still 14 years off. An academic who got an appointment there remarked that he was given a room with a desk and a nice chair and a window, and was expected to spend a lot of time there thinking, alone. This was very mid-20th-century, the concept that hard problems could be solved by hard thinking in isolation. Fermi once remarked "Sometimes you have to keep thinking past the point where it starts to hurt." They do encourage socialization. They're said to have a very good wine cellar.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago> They're said to have a very good wine cellar I can report that their cafeteria is excellent.
- gshubert17 10y agoGeorge Dyson acknowledged (about 8:38 in the video) that although the IAS itself was founded in 1930, the first idea for it was expressed in 1916 by Thorstein Veblen (at about 12:10): "Academic houses of refuge . . . a freely endowed central establishment where teachers and students of all nationalities, including Americans with the rest, may pursue their chosen work . . ."
- beastcoast 10y agoThe book "Turing's Cathedral" is a well-written account of IAS's early years, focusing on the events leading up to development of the first computers there by Von Neumann.