Public TV series to explore Princeton’s great minds
By: Jeff Milgram
It’s been home to some of the most brilliant minds in the world including Albert Einstein and now WNET, Channel 13, will peer into the minds of his intellectual heirs at the Institute for Advanced Study in a four-part miniseries that will begin Thursday.
In "Big Ideas," WNET lets viewers meet these remarkable individuals and hear them discuss their work, experiences, visions and obsessions in their own words.
Hosted by National Public Radio science journalist Ira Flatow, "Big Ideas" will run from 10 to 11 p.m. starting Thursday, and continuing April 10, April 24 and May 1. It will air on WHYY, the Philadelphia-based public TV station, on consecutive days, April 14-17.
"We first started talking with 13 about the idea of doing a program on what we do about four years ago," said Georgia Whidden, an institute spokeswoman. The station was receptive to the idea but "it took a while to find the funding," she said.
Finally, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Strachan and Vivian Donnelley, the Ambrose Monell Foundation and Rosalind P. Walter came up with the money.
The production company spent hundreds of hours interviewing the institute’s scholars over about 18 months. This wasn’t the first time the institute has been used as a production set. In 1994, it was used in the film "I.Q.," which centered around Einstein.
This time, it was less obtrusive, however. "It wasn’t like shooting ‘I.Q.’ at the institute, where you had a large cast," Ms. Whidden said. "Thirteen was wonderful."
"’Big Ideas’ is smart television," said executive producer Beth Hoppe. "It’s television that is not afraid to deal in challenging, complex ideas. These conversations with some of the most prolific thinkers of our time offer amazing insights into the cutting edge of intellectual thought in our day."
Filmed in part in Einstein’s library at the institute, the series offers intimate and penetrating discussions about science, art, history, mathematics, physics and cosmology.
The series reveals the hearts and minds of today’s theorists as they reflect on questions about such topics as the building blocks of matter, the evolution of language, the history of Islamic art, the origins of terrorism, the peculiar characteristics of prime numbers and the super-string theory that may just explain the existence of the universe to name only a few of the varied subjects discussed.
The institute is dedicated solely to the encouragement, support and patronage of learning through fundamental research and scholarship across a wide range of fields. Its faculty and visiting scholars do no teaching.
It was founded in 1930 by Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld as a center where intellectual inquiry could be carried out under ideal conditions.
The institute, located at Olden Lane and Einstein Drive, has no formal curriculum, degree programs, schedule of courses, laboratories or other experimental facilities. No contracted or directed research is done and the institute charges no tuition or fees.
Each of the series’ four episodes is loosely organized around a theme or area of study.
The opening episode probes the mysteries of outer space. Mr. Flatow speaks first with physicist-mathematician Freeman Dyson, who takes an imaginative leap into the future to discuss the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and his predictions for how human beings will colonize the solar system.
Young astrophysicist Sara Seagar, a rising star and visiting member at the institute, raises intriguing questions about planets perhaps harboring life outside our solar system.
Next, veteran astrophysicist John Bahcall, winner of the National Medal of Science, talks about neutrinos, spinning particles that are streaming through us by the billions every second.
The second episode pays homage to Einstein, focusing on the attempts by physicists, mathematicians and theorists to derive a unifying theory to explain all the forces of nature in the same terms.
This "Grand Unified Theory" is a goal over which Einstein toiled for the last 30 years of his life. Theoretical physicist Nathan Seiberg continues the labor with his research on string theories in various dimensions and in experimental particle physics.
Edward Witten, named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential Americans, talks about his pioneering work in M-theory, which is a theory that may unify all the various branches of string theory.
The third episode approaches the humanities from several provocative thresholds. The program opens with a short documentary about Kirk Varnedoe, the Museum of Modern Art’s former chief curator of painting and sculpture, as he makes one of his last rounds through the museum’s collection and then transitions from MoMA to the institute.
Along the way he shares his passion for the work of Jackson Pollock and discusses what makes modern art "modern."
Next, Mr. Flatow speaks with political philosopher Michael Walzer, who outlines his ideas about just and unjust war and the origins and changing nature of terrorism in the modern world.
A second short documentary turns the spotlight on classical historian Glen Bowersock, who has been studying ancient mosaics especially a group uncovered in Jordan to help him tease out more details about the great conquests of the past.
The final episode includes a mini-documentary exploring the history of game theory, which got its start at the institute. The documentary tells the story of how the lives of two towering geniuses John Forbes Nash Jr. and the late John von Neumann came to intersect.
In an interview, Dr. Nash also talks about the acclaimed Hollywood biographical film, "A Beautiful Mind."
The institute exercised no editorial control over the series, Ms. Whidden said.
"They’ve edited hundreds and hundred of hours of interviews into four hours," she said. "It’s 13’s creation."