HONORING SIR JAMES D. WOLFENSOHN
IASEINSTEINGALA
Welcome RO B B ERT D IJ KG R A AF IAS Director & Leon Levy Professor Chair Remarks C HAR LES S I M O NYI Chair, IAS Board of Trustees Personal Reflections AN D R E A M ITC H ELL Correspondent, NBC News “The Man with the Golden Rolodex” A film tribute to S I R JAM ES D. WO LFEN SO H N Remembering Elaine Wolfensohn IAS Bamberger Medal Presentation JIM SIMONS IAS Trustee Emeritus, Honorary Gala Chair Medal Proclamation C HAR LES S I M O NYI Musical Performance YEFI M B RO N FMAN Piano Soloist Thank You C HAR LES S I M O NYI
D EAR FRI E N DS ,
“Science, like the Mississippi, begins in a tiny rivulet in the distant forest. Gradually other streams swell its volume. And the roaring river that bursts the dikes is formed from countless sources.”
It is with profound gratitude and the greatest esteem that the Institute for Advanced Study and its Board of Trustees honor Sir James Wolfensohn, Board Chair Emeritus. A statesman, financier, and philanthropist who has contributed to society on a global scale, Jim is among the Institute’s most distinguished and devoted champions. Jim served on the IAS Board of Trustees for four decades, including twenty-one years at its helm. The consummate Board Chair, he deftly guided our community of scholars through a decisive period of evolution and development, fortifying the Institute’s resources, fostering its growth, and advancing its mission. Throughout his tenure, Jim tirelessly advocated for the Institute’s importance as a global resource for long-term thinking and breakthrough ideas—all the while engaged in such formidable undertakings as the presidency of the World Bank. The Institute for Advanced Study, now in its ninetieth year, remains the one and only independent, international institution where mathematics, the sciences, and the humanities coexist, commingle, and cross-pollinate; where theoretical researchers of the highest caliber and from all over the world explore whatever intrigues them most; where postdocs, mid-career professors, and preeminent academics work side by side, collaborating at will; where the boldest thinkers— and their ideas—flourish. Among the luminaries and leaders whose bold visions and prodigious generosity have shaped the Institute, Jim stands apart as one of the most dedicated and beloved. Thank you for joining our dear friend Jim in supporting the IAS mission and investing in the transformative power of curiosity.
—Abraham Flexner | IAS Founding Director Charles Simonyi IAS Board Chair Honorary Gala Chair
Jim Simons IAS Trustee Emeritus Honorary Gala Chair
INSTI TU TE FOR ADVAN C ED STU DY Founded in 1930, the Institute for Advanced Study is a private, independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. Each year, it welcomes more than 200 of the world’s most promising researchers and scholars who are selected and mentored by a permanent Faculty, each of whom are preeminent leaders in their fields. Physicist Albert Einstein, one of the Institute’s first Faculty members, serving from 1933 until his death in 1955, played a significant role in the institution’s early development. Einstein came to the United States to take up his appointment at the Institute at the invitation of education reformer Abraham Flexner, the Institute’s founding Director. During his time as an IAS Professor, Einstein pursued the goal of a unified field theory, and did so at a time when the goal of unifying the four fundamental forces of nature—gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—had been set aside by the majority of working physicists. In recent years, this has again become a central goal of leading string theorists working at IAS and around the world. In Einstein’s example and as Flexner envisioned, all scholars at IAS, from postdocs to mid-career and senior professors, are equally free to pursue their curiosity and the advancement of knowledge, creating a campus of unparalleled energy and focus that enables unforeseen possibilities and outcomes. Comprised of four Schools—Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Social Science— IAS enjoys an astounding record of introducing new understanding and is responsible for undeniable progress across disciplines and generations, from the development of one of the first stored-program computers to the establishment of art history as a discipline in the United States. Current research at IAS involves new ideas about space and time; the origins and long-term fate of the universe; the theoretical foundations of machine learning; reconstructing history using novel sources such as ancient DNA; and developing an anthropology of morality. Among our present and past Faculty and Members are 34 Nobel Laureates, 42 of the 60 Fields Medalists, and 18 of the 20 Abel Prize Laureates, as well as many MacArthur Fellows and Wolf Prize winners.
“ You need role models who fall down and pick themselves up. You need role models who show how even though you can’t do everything, you can do some things.” —Karen Uhlenbeck | 2019 Abel Prize Laureate and Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Mathematics
C HAR LE S S I MO N Y I
Microsoft | IAS Board Chair | Honorary Gala Chair
“What can the artist contribute to an intellectual community of scholars, mathematicians, and scientists (social and natural)? The art of music, for instance, cannot really explain or even theorize about anything at all, certainly not in the manner in which these other fields do. But in its mysterious, inimitable way, music can help us to know ourselves and our reality through an elegantly ordered aesthetic experience.” —Paul Moravec | Artist-in-Residence (2007–09)
Charles Simonyi, a high-tech pioneer, philanthropist, and space traveler, has been Chair of the Institute’s Board of Trustees since 2008 and an IAS Trustee since 1997. Born in Budapest, Hungary, he completed his studies at Berkeley and Stanford. Working at Xerox and then at Microsoft, he was the chief architect of Microsoft Word, Excel, and other widely used application programs. His passion for science has led him to travel into space twice onboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to visit the International Space Station, becoming the fifth space tourist and the first-ever tourist to fly twice. Through the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, Simonyi and his wife Lisa have donated over $140 million to local and global institutions providing “Access to Excellence” in basic research, public understanding of science, classical music, and the visual arts. An accomplished pilot and art collector, Simonyi is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Corresponding Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
JAM E S H . S I MO N S
Simons Foundation | IAS Trustee Emeritus | Honorary Gala Chair Jim Simons is chairman of the Simons Foundation and board chair and founder of Renaissance Technologies. Prior to his financial career, Simons was a Member (1972) in the IAS School of Mathematics, served as chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University, taught mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University, and worked as a cryptanalyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses. Simons holds a B.S. from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1976, he won the Veblen Prize of the American Mathematics Society for his work in geometry. He is a Trustee Emeritus of the IAS Board of Trustees, which he joined in 2001, and also serves as a trustee of the Stony Brook Foundation, Rockefeller University, MIT, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Mathematics Sciences Research Institute, and the New York Genome Center. Simons is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society.
IAS BAM BE R G ER M EDAL The IAS Bamberger Medal is the highest honor given by the Institute for Advanced Study to recognize visionary philanthropy in the spirit of Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld, the brother and sister who founded and endowed IAS in 1930, providing for its lasting and essential independence. Jim Simons was the first recipient of this award in 2019. The IAS Bamberger Medal is deeply emblematic of the Institute’s breadth and scholarly experience. The four touching or overlapping circles represent the four Schools, and the empty space, which symbolizes the freedom that scholars are granted during their time at IAS, underscores the importance of curiosity. With the IAS Bamberger Medal, the Institute recognizes Jim Wolfensohn for his extraordinary service on our Board of Trustees since 1979. As Board Chair, Jim served the Institute with generosity and diplomacy, fortifying IAS for the twenty-first century, stewarding the growth of its endowment, expanding its campus facilities, and extending its impact globally through new programs. With his characteristic warmth, humor, and energy, he oversaw the growth of the IAS to become one of the world’s leading centers for intellectual inquiry. The Institute is immensely grateful for Jim’s passion and support of innovation and ingenuity, reminding us of the power of visionary thinkers and the rewards of following one’s curiosity and deepest inquiries.
“ The life-blood of the arts and humanities are ideas and imagination, the ability to put together and see connections between things that may not seem related at first sight. A fascination with, and talent for, lateral thinking quite possibly drives many researchers into the field in the first place, but ... it needs to be worked with, trained, and cultivated in order to be used productively in research. The IAS gives us the time and the intellectual freedom to do exactly that.” —Barbara Kowalzig | Member (2007–08) and Visitor (2009) in the School of Historical Studies
SIR JAM E S D. WOLFEN S OHN
Wolfensohn & Company | IAS Board Chair Emeritus Former President of the World Bank and current Chairman of Wolfensohn & Company, LLC, Sir James Wolfensohn has been a Trustee of the Institute since 1979. He served as Chair of the Board of Trustees from 1986 until October 2007 when he became Chair Emeritus, making him the longest-serving Chair in the Institute’s history thus far. Wolfensohn helped steward the growth of the Institute’s endowment, which more than doubled in real terms under his leadership. His many accomplishments as Chair included overseeing the endowment of six Professorships across the Institute’s four Schools. Wolfensohn also took a particularly active interest in extending the global impact and profile of the Institute, reaffirming and strengthening its reputation as an international center for scholarship. Having served as chairman of the boards of Carnegie Hall and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Wolfensohn encouraged musical performance at the Institute, contributing to the establishment of the Artist-in-Residence program and regular concerts. Reflecting Wolfensohn’s long-standing commitment to the Institute and his dedication to the arts, the Institute named its lecture and performance hall, Wolfensohn Hall, in his honor in 1993. Wolfensohn’s tenure as Chair saw considerable expansion in the Institute’s academic buildings: Simonyi Hall (1993) and Bloomberg Hall (2002), which respectively house the Institute’s Schools of Mathematics and Natural Sciences; as well as the opening in 2007 of the extension to Bloomberg Hall as the new home of the Simons Center for Systems Biology. Wolfensohn was born in Sydney, Australia, in December 1933. An officer in the Royal Australian Air Force and a member of the 1956 Australian Olympic Fencing Team, Wolfensohn obtained his B.A. and LL.B. from the University of Sydney. He joined the Sydney law firm of Allen, Allen & Hemsley and at a later date was admitted to the Bar of the Supreme Court of Australia. In 1957, he was accepted into the Harvard Graduate School of Business, where he earned his M.B.A.
Selected Honors 2008 Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) 2006 The Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun of Japan 2005 The Knight Commander’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 2000 Officier de la Légion d’Honneur of the Republic of France (Previously named Chevalier in 1992) 1995 Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (KBE)
“The future is in our hands. We are not hapless bystanders. We can influence whether we have a planet of peace, social justice, equity, and growth, or a planet of unbridgeable differences between peoples, wasted resources, corruption, and terror.” —Sir James D. Wolfensohn
ROBBERT D I JKG RAAF
IAS Director & Leon Levy Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf is Director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study. Past President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and Past Co-Chair of the InterAcademy Council, Dijkgraaf is a mathematical physicist who has made important contributions to string theory and the advancement of science education. He is a recipient of the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Dijkgraaf is most recently the author of The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, published in 2017 by Princeton University Press, in which he and IAS founding Director Abraham Flexner articulate how essential basic research and original thinking are to innovation and societal progress, a belief that has informed the mission of the Institute for nearly ninety years.
A NDREA MI TC HELL Correspondent | NBC News
Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent for NBC News, covers foreign policy, intelligence, and national security issues for NBC News and MSNBC. She hosts “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on MSNBC, her daily program of political and foreign policy news. Since joining NBC News in 1978, Mitchell has covered seven presidential administrations. She appears regularly on “Nightly News with Lester Holt,” “Today,” and “Meet The Press.” Mitchell is an award-winning journalist whose honors include the 2019 News & Documentary Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press Award, 2019 Women in Washington Journalism Lifetime Achievement Award, The International Radio and Television Society Foundation’s Giant of Broadcasting and Electronic Arts Honor, and the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Lifetime Achievement Award, among others. She is the author of Talking Back: … to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (Viking 2005), a memoir about her experiences covering five presidents, Congress, and foreign policy.
“ Understanding galactic magnetism is an exciting goal unto itself, but there lurks another motivation for this work, one that takes us far beyond our home galaxy. The question: what happened during the first trillionth of a trillionth of a billionth of a second after the big bang?” —Susan Clark | Member in the School of Natural Sciences
Y EFI M B RO N F MA N Piano Soloist
“It can easily take many years, even decades, or sometimes, as in the case of Einstein’s theory of relativity, a century, for the societal value of an idea to come to light.” —Robbert Dijkgraaf | The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
Internationally recognized as one of today’s most acclaimed and admired pianists, Yefim Bronfman stands among a handful of artists regularly sought by festivals, orchestras, conductors, and recital series. His commanding technique, power, and exceptional lyrical gifts are consistently acknowledged by the press and audiences alike. As guest soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra and Franz Welzer-Möst, Bronfman participated in the opening concerts of Carnegie Hall’s 2019–2020 season, followed immediately by the inauguration of a season-long Artist-in-Residence project with the Vienna Symphony in both the Musikverein and Konzerthaus. During the fall, he also participated in farewell concerts for Zubin Mehta in Tel Aviv with the Israel Philharmonic, in Japan with the Vienna Philharmonic and Andrés Orozco-Estrada, as well as season-opening events in Houston, Seattle, and Rhode Island. Born in Tashkent in the Soviet Union, Bronfman immigrated to Israel with his family in 1973, where he studied with pianist Arie Vardi, head of the Rubin Academy of Music at Tel Aviv University. In the United States, he studied at The Juilliard School, the Marlboro School of Music, and the Curtis Institute of Music, under Rudolf Firkusny, Leon Fleisher, and Rudolf Serkin. Bronfman is a recipient of the prestigious Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In 2010, he was honored as the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane prize in piano performance from Northwestern University, and in 2015 was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Manhattan School of Music.
IAS EI NSTE I N GALA 2 02 0 D ON O RS
IAS is grateful to the following supporters of this year’s Gala: With special support from Jim & Marilyn Simons Charles & Lisa Simonyi
James R. Hamilton, Hamilton & Company Toru Hashimoto HMR Architects Steven Holl Architects Brownian Motion General Relativity Rush Holt Blavatnik Family Foundation R. Martin Chavez & Bob & Lynn Johnston R. Martin Chavez & Benjamin Rothschild Nora & John Kerr Benjamin Rothschild (Goldman Sachs Gives) Jingyi Li M. Klein & Company Neil & Natasha Chriss Loeb, Block & Partners, LLP David Li Kwok Po Roger Ferguson & Annette Andrea Mitchell Charitable Foundation Nazareth Alan Patricof Deborah Lunder & Alan John & Laura Overdeck Carla Volpe Porter & Associates Sir James & Elaine Wolfensohn Ezekowitz Tim Porter Ken & Debbie Baron Tamara & Kevin MacMillan Gerald Rosenfeld & Mark Baumgartner Mariner Investment Special Relativity Judith Zarin Victoria Bjorklund Group, LLC Ardea Partners Dr. Ronaldo Schmitz Raffaella Cribiore Math for America The Fribourg Family Harold T. & Vivian Shapiro Sarah & Landon Jones Raging Capital The Griffin-Cole Fund Hon. & Mrs. Henry A. Kissinger Richard & Ann Solomon Management, LLC Jonathan Nelson & Stevens & Lee Drs. Sarah & Martin L. Shelby White Maya Stendhal Rachel Gray Studebaker & Leibowitz Nancy Peretsman & Joel Studebaker Bethany & Robert B. Millard Bose-Einstein Robert Scully Peter Svrcek Sherri Rossoff, RockCreek Kathleen Bratton & Zegar Family Fund Lauren & John Veronis Brian Wruble Photoelectric Effect Zhou Zou Michael & Victoria Bershadsky Rita & Charles Bronfman Contributors Afsaneh & Michael Beschloss Robert & Luisa Fernholz Robert & Marta Adelson Friends Fishman Family Fund Carnegie Corporation Dale F. Eickelman Bruce Boman Spiro J. Latsis of New York Blaine Paxton Hall Jennifer Chayes & Ashvin B. Chhabra & Daniela Larry Leeds Laurie & Robert Jacobs Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Christian Borgs Bonafede-Chhabra Alexandre Sole Drs. Bobbi & Barry Coller & Joe Neubauer Citadel John Wermer Michael & Nina Douglas Mark Heising & Elizabeth Glen & Cheryl Lewy Simons Carl Feinberg David & Cynthia Lippe Leonard & Judy Lauder The Honorable & Loews Corporation Mrs. Chuck Hagel Nancy & Duncan MacMillan The Marc Haas Foundation Sandra Peterson Daniel & Joanna S. Rose Barbara & John Vogelstein
David Marquardt Richard & Ronay Menschel Lester & Dinny Morse Prof. Klaus Nehring & Dr. Yang-Ro Yoon Sydney & Stanley S. Shuman Shirley M. Tilghman Tom & Mila Tuttle Stephen & Diane Volk Lulu & Anthony Wang Mary & Jeff Zients
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT “The Institute for Advanced Study has achieved a position that is unrivaled in the world of science and scholarship. In all fields where it has been engaged, its contributions have set the standards against which other contributions may be measured.”
—Björn Wittrock | Founding Director, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study
In making a gift to the IAS Einstein Gala, you have supported basic research and partnered with the Institute in accelerating exceptional minds and ideas around the world. As an independent educational institution that charges no tuition, IAS is dependent on charitable contributions and grants for its operation. We thank you for your gift. To learn more about IAS and how you can further support the next generation of researchers and scholars, please contact Elizabeth Boluch Wood, Chief Engagement Officer, at (609) 734-8218 or lizwood@ias.edu. The Institute for Advanced Study is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (Tax ID #21-0634988).
IAS BOARD OF T RUST EE S Ann-Kristin Achleitner Afsaneh Beschloss Manjul Bhargava Victoria B. Bjorklund R. Martin Chavez Neil A. Chriss Christopher Cole Veena Das Lorraine Daston Robbert Dijkgraaf Mario Draghi Roger W. Ferguson, Jr. E. Robert Fernholz Mark Heising Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer Nancy S. MacMillan David F. Marquardt Narayana Murthy
Jonathan M. Nelson John Overdeck Nancy B. Peretsman Sandra E. Peterson Jörn Rausing Martin Rees David M. Rubenstein Charles Simonyi Peter Svennilson Shirley M. Tilghman Ewine F. van Dishoeck
IAS Trustees Emeriti Richard B. Black Martin A. Chooljian Vartan Gregorian Peter R. Kann Helene L. Kaplan Spiro J. Latsis Martin L. Leibowitz David K.P. Li Eric E. Schmidt Ronaldo H. Schmitz Harold T. Shapiro James H. Simons Michel L. Vaillaud Shelby White Marina v.N. Whitman James D. Wolfensohn Brian F. Wruble
“ The attempt to define ‘life’ raises concerns of a different order … It denotes at once a property of organized beings, a set of biological phenomena, a time that elapses between birth and death, and a range of events that fill this temporal space … Are we talking about the same thing in each case?” —Didier Fassin | James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science, in Life: A Critical User’s Manual
Planning Eventsful Production L&M Sound & Light Film Smartypants Graphic Design ChingFoster Printing Allied Printing
“The life of the individual only has meaning in so far as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful.” — A L B E RT E I N STE I N IAS Founding Professor
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