Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

tion, and knew that it would be impossible for a small Institute to
sustain itself in Newark, a comercial end industrial city possessing
no other institution for advsnced education or learning. &.was to
write iwressively in Universities of Friedrich Althoff, leading spirit
of. the Cultus Yinisterfun of Prussie (1882-19137) as hg developed his
Ilea of a Modern University. He learned that Althoff had made a great
effortto staff and equip the Prussian universities far the highest
possible development of medical science, only to find that the feu
men of genius he needed, who might have served in them, arus t be
protected f r m even moderate teaching responsibilities. And so, wrote
was.,.led to plan a series of institutions in which the
most fertile minds might be devoted to research in fields
in which fundamental progress had already been ~ d -- e
fields fn which the basf c sciences had already attained
6efinitenesa and solidity, in which problems, theoretic as
well as substantive, could be clearly fomulsted, in vhich
personnel of high quality had already been trained..,..
But so specific is the research institute that its particular
activities depend on an individual or a mall group.
Whatever the institute be called, its energfes center about
important things are ~ I -
K
person aoes, the--....The research
institute does nattrave to include all subierta w i f h i n ~
definite ffel-dd; it can &mobilize zs radilv as
.- - mobilize.. . I
.- -- --
Flexner disapproved of research institutes, mainly because
they dld not provide for the treining of the next generation of sclen-
tists and scholars as did the university. Though he outlined small,
flexible modern universities with a m inim of foml organization, he
dlsavored any Intention to favor the research institute:
Tfie emphasis which f have placed upon thinking and research
may create the impression that I am really d5scussing insel-
tutes of research ratter than universities. Such is not the
case...The research institute stands or falls by its success