Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

tunity for men to talk over their own problems and those which lie on
the borderline between them. This speculation led Flexner to sketch
what he hoped would be the physical sttributes a£ the Institute.
In course of ti=, the buildings m y be so conceived a d
executed as to facilitate intercourse of this type. I have
in mind the ev~lution thet in the process of centurfcs has
taken place at A ll Souls College, Oxford, where, as in the
proposed Inst iture, there are no uncerkr~duate students, and
where advanced students an2 the older Fellows live under
ideal conditions, whether for tFLeir individuzl work or for
collaboration and cooperation. No one plenned all this. It
grew up because scholars vexe left free to work out thekr uwn
salvation. It cannot be imitated or taken over; but it is
there, as evidence that the thing can be done, if the pace is
not forced and if the band of the executive.,.touehes but
lightly the gxowing organism. . .No 'director'.. .needs to worry
for feer that independent or watex-t-ight groups, ignorant of
one another, will form or not form, ff the spfrit of learn-
ing aninvites the Institute -- and without that there is no
reason for its existence -- tnen will talk together and work
together, because they live together, have thefr recreation
together, meet on the same hurane social level, and have a
single goal,
The Plrectoz was nw ready to propose the subjects with which
the Institute should begin. Prefacing his recomnendstiow vith the
caution that in his opinion "every step taken in forming the Institute
should be viewed as experimentalw and that "no subject w ill be chosen
or continued unless the right man or men can be found," he suggested
that mathematics, and, assuming that funds were adequste and the right
persons could be secured, econmics, should be tbe first. Mathtics
lay at the nvery foundation of mdern ~cience.~ Notmany American
universities were eminent in the field. It was "the severest of a11
discfplinea, antecedent, on the one hand, to science; on the other, to
philosophy and economics and thus to other social disciplines." .Although
mathematical thinking was usually indifferent to use, both pure and
t