Jan Grabowski, a fellow at IIAS during the 2024 academic year, is publishing an important essay for the forthcoming issue of The Jewish Quarterly (JQ257 - August 2024): "Whitewash: Poland and the Jews," addresses the ongoing challenges Poland faces in acknowledging its role in the Holocaust.
The IIAS is proud to extend heartfelt congratulations to Daniel R. Schwartz from the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on receiving the prestigious Landau Prize for 2024 in the field of Jewish History.
Schwartz's association with the IIAS is longstanding. He began his journey with the IIAS as a fellow, contributing significantly to the "From Hellenistic Judaism to Christian Hellenism" research group in 2001, and later served on the Board of Directors.
Eric Ford, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and a past fellow of IIAS, has developed a new method for detecting low-mass, potentially Earth-like planets around stars beyond our solar system.
Using advanced spectrographs to observe the subtle "wobble"—stellar spectrum variations—of stars caused by orbiting planets, he seeks to identify potential Earth-like planets with the aid of AI processing.
Eyal Benvenisti, a past fellow of IIAS, has inaugurated the Center for Applied Research on Risks to Democracy at Tel Aviv University. This center, which he heads, aims to identify and address the challenges facing contemporary democratic societies. Benvenisti emphasizes the importance of understanding and mitigating risks to democracy, promoting civic education, and fostering public engagement to rebuild trust and community cohesion in Israel and globally.
Former IIAS fellow and member of the "Molecular Electronics" research group, Ferdinand Evers (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), together with María Camarasa-Gómez and Daniel Hernangómez-Pérez, explores a new way to control magnetism at the molecular level in an important new paper just published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters: "Spin-Orbit Torque in Single-Molecule Junctions from ab Initio".
The 2024 Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences has been awarded to Peter Sarnak, General Director of the IIAS' Advanced School in Mathematics. Sarnak has been recognized for his groundbreaking development of the arithmetic theory of thin groups and the affine sieve, which integrates number theory, analysis, combinatorics, dynamics, geometry, and spectral theory.
Ruth Kanner, past fellow of the IIAS and organizer of the "Interrupting Kafka: Research Laboratory for Scholarship and Artistic Creativity," has brought her innovative directorial vision to Shanghai. Her adaptation of Shen Congwen’s 1934 novel "The Border Town" transforms actors into narrators and engages the audience as active participants.
"The Border Town" tells the story of Cuicui, a young woman living with her grandfather in rural Hunan. As she matures, Cuicui experiences the complexities of first love, torn between two brothers, Nuosong and Tianbao.
Limor Raviv (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics), a former IIAS fellow and member of the "What Allows Human Language?" research group, has co-authored an important study examining the acoustic characteristics of music and speech across different cultures.
Katrin Kogman-Appel, Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Münster and former fellow at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, recently joined National Review's "Great Books" podcast to discuss the Kennicott Bible. This masterpiece of Jewish book art, commissioned in 1476 in Galicia, Spain, showcases rich illumination and intricate decoration.
In honor of Immanuel Kant’s 300th Anniversary, "The Point Magazine" has invited Sergio Tenenbaum to reflect on Kant’s enduring influence on contemporary thought.
Tenenbaum, professor at UTM and a past fellow of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and part of the "Practical and Theoretical Rationality: A Comparative Study" research group, offers profound insights into Kant’s understanding of human nature and morality.
Michal Feldman (Tel Aviv University), IIAS' Bruno Memorial Award Laureate, just gave a captivating talk on algorithmic game theory at LSE.
Her presentation, hosted by the London School of Economics Mathematics Department, shed light on the pragmatic shift towards approximation over steadfast optimality, challenging conventional paradigms.
Cognitive scientist and past fellow of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies, Simon Kirby recently delivered a captivating TED talk delving into an unexpected project that captivated audiences worldwide: the creation of "Cybraphon."
Cybraphon, as Kirby described it, is a musical automaton unlike any other, built with a unique purpose—to mirror humanity's obsession with online popularity.
Renowned Sanskrit scholar H.V. Nagaraja Rao, a past fellow of the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies and a member of the "A Lasting Vision: Dandin’s Mirror in the World of Asian Letters" and "Toward a History of Sanskrit Poetry" research groups, was recently honored with the 'Champaka Kalaa Ratna' Lifetime Achievement Award by the Champaka Educational and Cultural Trust.
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, a former fellow of the IIAS, recently discussed the profound parallels between Ukrainian and Jewish struggles for freedom and cultural preservation in an interview with Marta Farion, Vice President for North America of the UWC.
In his recent paper, "Restricted nominalism about number and its problems," Stewart Shapiro (Ohio State University), a past fellow of the IIAS and member of the “Computability: Historical, Logical, and Philosophical Foundations” research group, , along with colleagues Eric Snyder and Richard Samuels, delves into a critical analysis of Thomas Hofweber's thesis of "internalism" concerning discourse on natural numbers.
