About the FEST program

Piet Hut earned a double PhD in particle physics and astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam.  Four years later, in 1985 at age 32, he was appointed full professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

In his first year at IAS, he and Josh Barnes introduced the Barnes–Hut algorithm, a breakthrough that sped up large-scale simulations by orders of magnitude.  The method spread far beyond astrophysics to particle physics, protein folding, and other fields, earning whole chapters in computer science textbooks.

Hut organized several interdisciplinary collaborations, one of those extending asteroid-impact theories of mass extinction to include comets, and he co-founded the B612 Foundation, dedicated to predicting and deflecting hazardous asteroids—an effort that led to an asteroid being named in his honor: 17031 Piethut.

His interests extended into consciousness studies: at the first major scientific conference on the subject, Tucson II (1996), he presented a radical paper with the cognitive psychologist Roger Shepard, “Turning the Hard Problem of Consciousness Upside Down and Sideways.”  He later joined dialogues with the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala (1997), commented on E.O. Wilson’s keynote at the World Economic Forum in Davos (2000), and became one of the few scientists elected to the Husserl Circle (2001).

In 2002, Hut was appointed Head of the newly created Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at IAS, a role he held until becoming Professor Emeritus at the IAS mandatory age of 70, in 2023.  He was a co-founder of the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) in Tokyo in 2012, playing a central role in securing a $100 million grant for its first decade.

Today he leads FEST, a program to build a scientific foundation for the study of mind, parallel in rigor to the science of matter.  His long-term goal is to establish a new center of learning, combining the educational spirit of a liberal arts college with the research depth of the Institute for Advanced Study—currently envisioned under the working title “Reality U.”