I don’t know how cuts for DOE and NSF funding will affect theoretical physics, but there’s news today of a very large gift that will may help make up for such cuts. The Leinweber Foundation announced \$90 million in gifts to finance theoretical physics institutes (and see Forbes article here). Funds will mainly finance postdocs and graduate students, also a conference every two years. The institutions getting this funding are the following:
The MIT CTP, now rebranded the MIT Center for Theoretical Physics – a Leinweber Institute has announced that they will host six new postdocs (two per year, three year positions) and up to six graduate students/year. Starting this fall the director will be Tracy Slatyer.
At Michigan, already back in 2017, the MCTP had received an \$8 million dollar Leinweber gift and was renamed the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics. Now they be expanding, changing from Center to Institute.
At Berkeley, the news is that the BCTP will be renamed the LITP (Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics), with Yasunori Nomura as director. There will be four new postdocs (currently 15)., as well as support for grad students, visitors, etc.
At Chicago, the current Kadanoff Center for Theoretical Physics will be merged into a new Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Chicago, announcements here and here. Dam Thanh Son will be the director. As with the other institutes, funding will pay for postdocs, grad students, visitors, etc.
Finally, at the IAS, they are already an Institute, so they had to call it something else, the Leinweber Forum for Theoretical and Quantum Physics. I’m not finding now any more information about this beyond the name.
Update: A story about this by Adrian Cho at Science.
