IAS Founder Abraham Flexner

Archivist’s Talk Celebrates Institute’s Visionary Founder Abraham Flexner
https://ci5.googleusercontent.com/proxy/rM6s8ZG2R2kkdLcLTZv0k-VLYA9ZEELYqzlz_EVcJPMDEaxmOllrgNi4VJXVYLI7L-NaZbm61VakGSjgQhW_VpU-bCMJj3WcB8BFjenqBkj4kkeHfDjstLQ7WC__-g=s0-d-e1-ft#http://www.towntopics.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/page3.jpgFounder Abraham Flexner" />
DEDICATING FULD HALL: Albert Einstein takes center stage for this
photograph on May 22, 1939 at the dedication ceremony for the
Institute for Advanced Study’s new building, Fuld Hall. From left:
Alanson B. Houghton, C. Lavinia Bamberger (Louis Bamberger’s
sister), Albert Einstein, Mrs. Abraham Flexner (the successful
Broadway playwright Anne Crawford), Abraham Flexner, John R.
Hardin, Herbert H. Maass, and President of Princeton University
Harold W. Dodds. (Image Courtesy of Institute for Advanced Study,
Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center)
Christine Di Bella, archivist at the Institute for Advanced Study,
spoke to an audience of almost 100 at the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory last week about the history of the Institute for
Advanced Study.
The provocative title of Ms. Di Bella’s talk, “The Usefulness of
Useless Knowledge: The History of the Institute for Advanced Study”
was a big draw for technician John Adams, currently working on
PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment in magnetic fusion. “I
am not a physicist and so I really appreciate talks that are geared
toward a general audience. Most researchers here are working on
very specific areas and this topic has a broad appeal.”
Ms. Di Bella opened her Powerpoint presentation with an image of
the Institute’s Founding Director Abraham Flexner and explained
that her talk’s title comes from an oft-given speech by Flexner,
published in Harpers in 1939.
There is a playful quality to Flexner’s title. He was not
altogether unconcerned with practical applications of scholarship,
as is attested by his efforts to add faculty in economics and
politics and in humanistic studies to the initial collection of
mathematicians and theoretical scientists.
Flexner’s “useless” knowledge refers to intellectual and spiritual
or humanistic pursuits. His defense is made in the context of an
increasingly materialistic world. He is arguing for curiosity over
pragmatism, for “useless” pursuits that give life significance. In
effect, he wants a broader conception of what is regarded as
“useful,” one that recognizes the “roaming and capricious
possibilities of the human spirit.” His article is worth reading
and can be viewed online courtesy of the Institute’s library
(http://library.ias.edu/files/ UsefulnessHarpers.pdf).
In it, Flexner recounts a conversation he once had with Kodak
founder George Eastman, in which they argued who should be named
“the most useful worker in science in the world.” Eastman picks
radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi. Flexner picks theoretical
scientist James Clerk Maxwell (among others) whose curiosity about
electricity and magnetism resulted in the formulae and theories
that made Marconi’s work possible. According to Flexner,
“curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is
probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking. It is
not new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, and to Sir Isaac Newton,
and it must be absolutely unhampered.”
Flexner cites advances in technology that have ultimately resulted
from the work of other theoretical scientists as he pleads for the
freedom to pursue unfettered curiosity. But, he points out, such
ultimate, unforeseen and unpredictable practical results are not a
justification for curiosity, but rather a sort of happy
by-product.
Not everyone gets it. One who does, is philanthropist Warren Buffet
who regards Flexner as his “hero.” When he attended the Forbes 400
Summit on Philanthropy last year at the main branch of the New York
Public Library, Mr Buffett brought along a copy of Flexner’s 1940
autobiography, I Remember, and talked about
Flexner’s influence on him and on philanthropy in general.
“The Institute for Advanced Study,” said Ms. Di Bella, “is a place
to take risks, where curiosity is valued, where scholars are under
no obligation to do what they say they will do when they apply for
admission but are free to pursue ‘unfettered research.’”
Some of the characteristics that make for “Advanced Study,” she
explained, were put in place right from the start when Flexner
determined there would be no classes, no grades, and no degrees.
Although the Institute is authorized by the New Jersey Department
of Education to bestow doctoral degrees it has never done so. It
was to have a small permanent faculty and have Fellows, now called
“Members,” come for temporary stays, typically one year at a time.
“The Institute hasn’t changed that much,” she said.
“The idea was not that the permanent faculty would direct the work
of these visitors, but rather the two would form a community of
scholars learning from each other, with faculty available for
counsel as needed,” said Ms Di Bella. “Work was to be mostly at the
post-doctoral level, with newly minted PhDs rubbing shoulders with
senior scholars on sabbaticals, and everything in between.”
After Flexner’s tenure as Institute director ended in 1939, he
wrote four books in the next two decades. At the age 81, he
enrolled in classes at Columbia University; a photograph
in The New York
Times showed him seated among
twenty-somethings. When he died in 1959, an editorial
in The New York
Times read: “No other American of his time has
contributed more to the welfare of this country and of humanity in
general.”
Einstein and Veblen
Albert Einstein, of course, figures large in any history of the
Institute, but Ms. Di Bella was careful to balance the influence of
the most famous scientist in the world with other IAS figures such
as Oswald Veblen, without whose initial involvement the Institute
would be very different today. She also spoke briefly about the
Electronic Computer Project and the Institute founders Louis
Bamberger and Caroline Bamberger Fuld.
Ms. Di Bella joined the Institute’s Shelby White and Leon Levy
Archives Center at the Institute in 2009 after archives positions
with the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections
Libraries (PACSCL), the 92nd Street Y, the Bentley Historical
Library at the University of Michigan, and Harvard Business School.
She holds an MS in Information from the University of Michigan’s
School of Information and a bachelor’s degree in English from
Wesleyan University.
One of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and
intellectual inquiry, the Institute was founded in 1930, and has
been the intellectual home of diverse scholars including Erwin
Panofsky, John von Neumann, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson,
Kurt Gödel, George Kennan, Clifford Geertz, Joan Wallach Scott, and
Edward Witten. The Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center is
located in the Institute’s Historical Studies-Social Science
Library.
In the interests of full disclosure, it should be said that this
reporter is a former employee of the Institute for Advanced Study,
and currently works as an independent consultant there. She also
authored a pictorial history of the Institute for the Arcadia Books
Images of America series, published in 2011.
Written by: Linda
Arntzenius