The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI), founded in 1982, is an independent nonprofit mathematical research institution whose funding sources include the National Science Foundation, foundations, corporations, and more than 90 universities and institutions. The Institute is located on the University of California, Berkeley campus, close to Grizzly Peak, on the hills overlooking Berkeley.
MSRI was founded in 1982 by Shiing-Shen Chern, Calvin Moore, and Isadore M. Singer. MSRI hosts about 85 mathematicians and postdoctoral research fellows each semester for extended stays and holds programs and workshops, which draw approximately 2,000 visits by mathematical scientists throughout the year. Unlike many mathematical institutes, it has no permanent faculty or members, and its scientific activities are overseen by its Directorate and its Scientific Advisory Committee, a panel of distinguished mathematicians drawn from a variety of different areas of mathematical research.
Its main activity consists of holding four semester-long research programs on specific mathematical topics each year (two at a time), in which senior professors, research members, and postdoctoral fellows stay for extended periods. The paired programs are often related, and, occasionally, a program will span both fall and spring semesters. MSRI has also held "double (or jumbo) programs" (such as the Algebraic Geometry program in Spring 2009) that consist of a single program of twice the typical size. In addition, many visitors come for shorter periods or for more focused weeklong workshops connected with each program (including partially expository introductory workshops at the commencement of each program).
MSRI also hosts research workshops that are unconnected to the main programs, such as its annual workshop on K-12 mathematics education, Critical Issues in Mathematics Education. During the summer, workshops for graduate students are held.
MSRI sponsors programs for middle and high school students and their teachers as part of the Math Circles and Circles for Teachers that meet weekly in San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland. It also sponsors the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad (BAMO), the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival, and the U.S. team of girls that competes at the China Girls Math Olympiad.
James Simons, founder of Renaissance Technologies and a University of California, Berkeley mathematics alum is one of the most generous supporters of MSRI.
The lectures given at MSRI events are videotaped and made available for free on the internet.
MSRI has sponsored many events that reach out to the non-mathematical public. Its Simons Auditorium hosts special performances of classical music. Mathematician Robert Osserman has held a series of public "conversations" with prominent artists who have been influenced by mathematics in their work, such as composer Philip Glass, actor and writer Steve Martin, playwright Tom Stoppard, and actor and author Alan Alda. MSRI also collaborates with local playwrights for an annual program of new short mathematics-inspired plays at Monday Night Playground at the [Berkeley Repertory Theater], and co-sponsored a series of mathematics-inspired films with UC Berkeley's [Pacific Film Archive] for MSRI's 20th anniversary. It also created a series of mathematical puzzles that were posted among the advertising placards on San Francisco Muni buses.