The mean girls of genius school

As intimidating as the morning’s sessions were, lunch may have been even worse. In a packed cafeteria, small cliques of scientists dig into grilled salmon or vegetarian curry and submerge themselves in fervent conversations. None of those discussions, contrary to the lunchtime chatter at my own office, involve speculations about the Breaking Bad series finale or heated debates over the relative merits of a SodaStream. Eyes flit up briefly to examine the intruder wandering amidst the tables, before quickly dismissing her in favor of current company. Let me be honest: I was the Mean Girl in high school. Now I know what the other side felt like.

Helmut Hofer (left) and Avi Wigderson (right). Photo by Andrea Kane

I finally gravitate towards a smiling, rotund gentleman holding court over a rapt crowd of fellow diners. His name is Dr. Helmut Hofer (yes, the same Helmut Hofer whose groundbreaking research ushered in a new field known as "Hofer geometry"), and within minutes he’s assembled a small entourage of visiting scholars for a group interview outside. Hofer worked as a professor at NYU prior to joining the Institute’s permanent faculty in 2008. He and his fellow researchers all agree that IAS offers them something that other schools don’t: freedom from research expectations and the associated financial strain. "Nobody tells you what to think about, or says, ‘I’ll only give you money if you think about how to solve this problem’," Hofer says. "It’s harder and harder to get money [for research] and here we don’t deal so much with that stress."

That’s mostly because the IAS operates outside of conventional research funding paradigms. The Institute relies on endowment funds to pay faculty, offer stipends to visiting scholars, and covers expenses like dining and housing. An organization called Friends for the Institute for Advanced Study proffers additional money in exchange for "the opportunity to interact with institute faculty and members" over fireside chats and special forums. And the Institute’s board of trustees counts Google’s Eric Schmidt and Mario Draghi (president of the European Central Bank and Forbes Magazine’s eighth most powerful person in the world) among its esteemed — and exceedingly wealthy — members. In other words, Institute scholars are largely immune to the strings often attached to scientific grants. Nor do they suffer the repercussions of tightening research budgets, which are forcing some scientists to turn to unconventional (and unpredictable) sources of money. You won’t find Hofer’s latest research proposal on Kickstarter.

"People want to see deliverables in one year, two years, three years. But that isn’t the example we want to set."

But that financial invincibility isn’t ironclad. Visiting scholars sometimes receive funding from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, NASA, and other government agencies. And that money is increasingly in danger: federal sequestration this year indiscriminately stripped billions from research groups including the NIH and the NSF, eliminating grants and even costing some scientists their jobs. Plus, controversial legislation — spearheaded by Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) — threatens to overhaul how the NSF allocates that dwindling cash. More specifically, Smith wants the government to fund only those projects that will "advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and...secure the national defense." Many of the risky, more theoretical projects tackled by IAS scholars don’t fit that paradigm. "Researchers are overwhelmed by short-term thinking," Dijkgraaf says. "People want to see deliverables in one year, two years, three years. But that isn’t the example we want to set."

IAS scholars need not show any deliverables from their research at all. Hofer points out that many scholars publish less during their time at the Institute (if they publish at all) simply because they took "a riskier path" that didn’t pan out. And Institute residents are adamant that this doesn’t mean, as some critics have contended, that the approach lays waste to great minds by allowing them to rest idly. Instead, it allows them to focus on research topics that invigorate them — and do so in a community where they feel like they fit in. Perhaps not surprisingly, theoretical mathematicians often know what social rejection feels like too. "We do research, we do more research, then we eat and end up talking about our research, and then we do more research," says IAS member David Geraghty, a theoretical mathematician working with Hofer. Moments later, after I ask him what he studies and gape blankly at his response, he explains that he’s seen that same reaction more times than he wishes to count. "It helps a lot," he smirks at me, "that I’m working in a community where people’s eyes don’t go dead when I tell them what I do."