Mission Statement

The mission of the Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of Amsterdam is to strengthen and maintain research and teaching in theoretical physics. It also aims to disseminate knowledge and enthusiasm for physics in society not only to attract students to physics, but also to communicate the importance of physics to the wider society.

While theoretical physics is strongly linked to experimental physics, its status as a separate discipline is well justified. New developments in physics come from new theoretical insights as well as from new experiments. As a result there are cases in which new observations from experiments challenge theorists to explain them, but it is just as likely that the new phenomena predicted by theory challenge experimentalists to design experiments to verify them. We stimulate collaboration with experimental groups to promote this kind of exchange.

The theoretical descriptions of phenomena in widely varying areas in physics often make use of the same techniques. As a result there is intensive cross fertilization between different branches of theoretical physics. For this reason we maintain the importance of a unified institute of theoretical physics, rather than a thematic division of physics, in which theorists are associated with experimental investigations.

As the analytic methods for problem solving in theoretical physics are applicable in many fields besides physics, the graduates of the Institute for Theoretical Physics find very diverse types of employment. We maintain that this is part of our role in society, besides the education of highly trained researchers for academic and industrial investigations.

Without detracting anything from this role in society, we strongly believe in the importance of fundamental research irrespective of the possibility of immediate applications. The essential technical progress of society requires new insights into the fundamental properties of matter as much as the development of existing theories into new technologies.