Discovery Knows No Borders

Following Oppenheimer’s seven Academy Award wins, including the highest honor of Best Picture, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ has released a 90-second anthem video reinforcing their timely legacy, produced by NYC-based Emmy-winning and Oscar-nominated production company Smartypants. Oppenheimer viewers will recognize the Institute as a key institution featured in the film, in footage and photographs featuring other great minds like Albert Einstein, Emmy Noether, Kurt Gödel and Hetty Goldman, and founders Abraham Flexner, Louis Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld, among others.

A pivotal location shared between Nolan's Oppenheimer and the anthem video is the Institute's pond. In the feature film, the pond (the construction of which took place during Oppenheimer’s directorship) formed the setting for imagined conversations between the protagonist and founding IAS Faculty member Albert Einstein. In the anthem video, viewers can see Brad Bolman, a Member of the Institute's School of Historical Studies, standing next to the pond. Another iconic IAS location included in both works is the exterior of Fuld Hall, the first building to be completed on the Institute's campus in 1939. Robert Downey Jr. welcomed Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer to the Institute with the famous FULD HALL signage in the background, and scholars Jonathan Davis-Secord, Sarah Davis-Secord, Penelope Lisa Deutscher, and Durba Ghosh, are seen exiting the building beneath this same sign in the anthem video.

With the production style of a cinematic trailer, Smartypants blends very rare archival footage of the early scholars and laureates navigating the campus and teaching seminars cut against modern-day lectures and meetings, which take place in the same buildings, rooms, and offices to this day. The juxtaposition of past and present emphasizes the Institute’s long-standing dedication to solving society’s fundamental problems by gathering great minds across many sectors. As its longest-serving director, J. Robert Oppenheimer represents a leadership model designed to unite multiple disciplines--not just math and natural sciences, but history and social science. Smartypants shows, not tells, this history through the clearest depictions of long-stored archival footage, paired with organic representations of the modern-day diverse body of scholars.

Established in 1930, the Institute has served as a model for protecting and promoting independent inquiry, prompting the establishment of similar institutes around the world, and underscoring the importance of academic freedom worldwide.