Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

and laborious in a university, 35
Dr. Ham Zinsser of the Hanard Medical School, in the course ;
of a long and brilliant ansuer to the inquiry of the Cmfttee on Site,
wrote:
While I do not feel capable of maklng any constructive sug-
gestions as to how you can carry out your plan, yet I feel
quite sure that it cannot be carried out- in a separate in-
stitute of pu%research. This might succeed for e feu years
or perhaps a decade, bur for permanent consecutive Intellec-
tuel strength 1 believe that an institution must be tightly
intenoven with the web a£ n~tional education and with the
scholarship ef the ecuntry as a whole. ..,36
Most essentiel in his judgment was the assoeiatfon of such an institution
with a university. "I would rake no attempt whatever to establish such
an institution in Pl'ewark or in any other place as remote from the current
of university life as thf~,~ he vrote.
Dr. Veblen offered the following in ansuer Co a request frm
Flexnes on the oecaskon of a visit to Princeton in the winter of 1931:
The location of your Institute should be such that your
group of scholars would I x one of several cultural groups.
It should never be too large. Otherwise scope would be
given for "organization* and ttte failures we know so well.
Xf money far too large an institute should be avaflable,
let there be two, three, or N institutes, all separate!
But if there were just one Institute for Advanced Study
isolated in a community devoted chiefly to business it would
be in danger of not being able to maintain itself.37
The Professor suggested that Prfncetcn would be an ideal location.
1nterestingly;Dr. !blmon Lfschetz, Veblen's colleague at
Princeton, saw the difficulty of providing for the future of a small
fnstitution but offered a somewhat different conclusion^ Noting that
small colleges were peculiarly vulnerable to non-support, he thought the
Institute wauld be safe~t if it played a vital part in a large and