On February 1st, 2024, the Institute celebrated the launch of a new Permanent Professor’s Chair named after Jean-Pierre Bourguignon, Director of IHES from 1994 to 2013 and now Nicolaas Kuiper Honorary Professor at the Institute. The creation of this Chair was made possible through an exceptional gift to the endowment fund of Friends of IHES by Claire-Lise and Philippe Tondeur, which was then matched by Marilyn and Jim Simons through the Simons Foundation International. The inaugural holder of the Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Chair is Dustin Clausen, a Permanent Professor at the Institute since April 2023.

During the ceremony, Marwan Lahoud, President of the IHES Board of Directors, as well as the donors, spoke about their friendship and admiration for the scientific and political career of Jean-Pierre Bourguignon. They particularly emphasized that it is also thanks to Jean-Pierre Bourguignon’s vision that the Institute is now able to launch a new Permanent Professor’s Chair. It was indeed shortly after the beginning of his term as Director of IHES in 1994, that he began to see private funding as an essential means to ensure the Institute’s financial sustainability. Through their donations, Claire-Lise and Philippe Tondeur, on one hand, and Marilyn and Jim Simons, on the other, hope to provide the necessary material resources to continue making IHES a conducive environment for top-level mathematical creation, especially for its Permanent Professors.

In his speech, Jean-Pierre Bourguignon also reflected on his friendships with the donors. He reminisced about his initial meetings with Philippe Tondeur at the Arbeitstagungen in Bonn and his stay at Stony Brook in 1972-1973 upon Jim Simons’ invitation. To put this major donation into perspective, he highlighted the crucial role of the Permanent Professors in the history of the Institute: it is their research and attractiveness that have built the reputation of the Institute.

It is in this lineage that Emmanuel Ullmo, Director of IHES, sees Dustin Clausen, the first holder of the Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Chair. The scientific conference to inaugurate the new Chair, organized by Dustin Clausen and held on January 26th, 2024, offered a comprehensive overview of his diverse mathematical interests including stable homotopy theory, p-adic geometry, geometric Langlands correspondence, number theory, and more. These fields have recently seen exciting new developments thanks to the theory of condensed mathematics developed by Dustin Clausen and Peter Scholze.

To conclude the inaugural ceremony of the Jean-Pierre Bourguignon Chair, Dustin Clausen discussed some of the work he has undertaken since his arrival at the Institute in April 2023. He notably established a generalization of the Quillen-Lichtenbaum descent conjecture with Robert Burklund (to appear), and developed unstable algebraic K-theory with Mikala Ørsnes Jansen. Together with Peter Scholze, he has been teaching a widely followed course on condensed mathematics, serving as the foundation for a forthcoming research monograph. Through this book, Dustin Clausen hopes to make the theory of condensed mathematics more accessible to the broader mathematical community.

Claire-Lise and Philippe Tondeur

Claire-Lise and Philippe Tondeur are a Swiss-American academic couple who have spent most of their lives as university professors in the United States. While Philippe is a mathematician, Claire-Lise specializes in French literature. It was through her husband that she was introduced to the world of mathematics and mathematicians. Both are particularly fascinated by the creative process in both science and art. Philippe has been heavily involved in science and technology policy, notably as the director of the Division of Mathematical Sciences at the NSF at the turn of the century.

Marilyn and Jim Simons

Marilyn and Jim Simons have been involved in the development of IHES for almost 30 years. As co-Chairs of Friends of IHES, they have set up a dedicated endowment fund for the Institute in the United States with the goal of raising 20 million dollars by 2025. To encourage donations to the fund, they have committed to match every gift of up to 10 million dollars through the Simons Foundation International. To this day, more than 17 million dollars in gifts and pledges have already been secured for the endowment.

Rewatch the ceremony here.

More than 220 people gathered at the iconic Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center on November 2^nd for the 2023 Friends of IHES Gala celebrating Jazz and Physics.

Thanks to the generosity of gala sponsors and guests, over $1,220,000 were raised in both gifts and pledges, reaching a new record in the history of the Friends of IHES galas.

Following the cocktail, guests were greeted by Marcus Miller, the Master of ceremonies, who ensured that every moment of the evening was unforgettable. While the gala was under the high patronage of Laurent Bili, Ambassador of France to the United States and Jérémie Robert, Consul general of France in New York, it is Damien Laban, Deputy Consul general of France in New York, who delivered the inaugural speech of the evening.

A professional tenor saxophonist and a cosmologist, Stephon Alexander then delivered a captivating speech about Jazz and the Musical Spheres, before offering the audience a very unique musical performance, along honorary guest performers Will Calhoun, Santi Debriano, and Hector Martignon, who were also joined for a couple of songs by Marcus Miller. Together, their talent and unwavering passion seamlessly united the worlds of physics and music.

Jim and Marilyn Simons, co-Chairs of Friends of IHES, also encouraged the guests to contribute to the Friends of IHES endowment fund by offering to match all donations made during the call to action led by auctioneer Lydia Fenet. Over $450,000 were raised just towards this goal, after much excitement around the exclusive auction items that were proposed. Special thanks to X, Moonshot Factory, SETI, Unistellar, Will Calhoun and his band the Living Colour as well as to Stephon Alexander for their contributions to this auction.

Friends of IHES and IHES thank all the gala donors who made this exceptional event possible. Special thanks to the Simons Foundation International, gala underwriter, and thank you in particular to Societe Generale, Premier Sponsor, as well as other gala sponsors, including Jump Trading, David Faucon, XTX Markets, BNP Paribas, Bristol Assurances, Michael R. & Nina Douglas, Ross Garon, Kavita Shah & Benjamin Servenay, Bloomberg, Ipsos, as well as Farida Khelfa & Henri Seydoux. Thanks also to gala benefactor, William R. Hearst III, for his support.

A very warm thank you to all the donors and supporters, whose contributions to Friends of IHES and to its endowment fund during this gala have a direct and lasting impact on international scientific conversation and freedom of research.

Discover the photos from the gala on the dedicated website here!

Nikita Nekrasov, theoretical physicist, for many years associated with IHES, has been awarded the 2023 Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics.

This award acknowledges Nekrasov’s “elegant application of powerful mathematical techniques to extract exact results for quantum field theories, as well as shedding light on integrable systems and non-commutative geometry.”

Professor at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook, Nikita Nekrasov was a permanent professor at IHES in 2000-2013, and a visiting professor almost every year since then. He is also on the board of Friends of IHES, a US-based non-profit organization.

Some of the important contributions that have earned him this prestigious prize are discussed in the paper “Seiberg-Witten Prepotential from Instanton Counting”, that he has worked on during the time he spent as a permanent professor at IHES. Remarkably, this is the most-cited single-author paper by a researcher affiliated with IHES and this year marks its 20^th anniversary.

The Dannie Heineman Prize is awarded every year by the American Institute of Physics and the American Physical Society to researchers who have made significant contributions to the field of mathematical physics.

IHES warmly congratulates Prof. Nekrasov on this award!

To learn more about Nikita Nekrasov and his work, watch this interview he gave in 2018.

The 2021 edition of the Friends of IHES Gala will take place on November 16^th and will be dedicated to the theme of “Women in fundamental research”.

This year, the gala will take on a hybrid format. We will offer a virtual event, which will feature pre-recorded footage as well as live speeches and, if the health context allows, a small, exclusive in-person component will take place at the French Consulate of NYC.

Women are still largely underrepresented in science and mathematics and much more must be done to ensure equal representation for female mathematicians and scientists, not least at IHES, where 2021 marks the arrival of Laure Saint-Raymond as the first female permanent professor. Through this gala, IHES intends to have a long-term impact on this issue and implement actions to improve and foster a better representation of women at the Institute.

 This event will be an occasion to celebrate women at IHES as well as prominent female figures in tech, finance and science. While paying homage to their achievements, we will learn from their experiences and insights as to how to make the technology, science and business sectors more inclusive.

 This year’s gala honoree will be Marilyn Simons, the co-founder of the Simons Foundation, which exists to advance the frontiers of research in mathematics and the basic sciences. Through her extraordinary commitment as a philanthropist and as President of the Simons Foundation (1994-2021), Marilyn Simons has contributed immensely to the development of science and technology over the past 25 years.

The Association for Women in Mathematics (AWM), which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, is excited to be associated with the gala.

To learn more and buy your ticket please visit the gala website.

Press release – 1 February 2019

A mathematician very close to the IHES, which he has been visiting regularly for more than 25 years, Prof. Penner wanted to pay tribute to his partner who died in January 2018. “I am a great believer in the Institute’s mission and am pleased to have associated our names to the IHES,” said Robert Penner. “Even with her only brief glimpse of it, Lexy was dazzled that there could be such a place as the IHES and would be gratified with this association.”

The gift will endow a triennial chair of Mathematics at the Institute that will provide support for prominent scientists. Chair holders are a specific type of invitations of IHES large visitors program: they are nominated by the Scientific Council, and come to the IHES for at least three months each year over three consecutive years, benefiting from the outstanding research and living conditions offered at the Institute.

“We are very grateful to Bob for his generous donation. It enables the IHES to fulfill its mission to offer exceptional scientists a place where their research can flourish,” said Michael R. Douglas, Chairman and President of the Friends of IHES, Inc.

“This generous gift from Bob is also an important contribution to our ongoing fundraising campaign, and I express my deepest gratitude for his support” said Emmanuel Ullmo, Director of the IHES. “Having scientists supporting our campaign is very meaningful and encourages us to pursue our efforts to defend the importance of unconstrained research.”

The first chair holder of the Alexzandria Figueroa and Robert Penner Chair will be Prof. Joseph Ayoub from the University of Zurich. A specialist of Algebraic Geometry, which has a long tradition at the IHES, Ayoub will benefit from all aspects of the academic and community life, that are unique elements of being at the Institute, and will contribute to the scientific dynamism of the IHES.