Institute For Advanced Study

Princeton, New Jersey • Spring 1998

The cornerstone of Fuld Hall, the Institute for Advanced Study's first building, was laid on May 22, 1939, the day this photograph was taken. During the nine years following its founding in 1930, Institute Faculty and Members worked in temporary quarters. "I said nothing for several years as to building and site," wrote founding Director Abraham Flexner, describing the Institute's first few years in his autobiography, "and that because, despite their crucial importance, these things come second." The endowment fund that led to the founding of the Institute was given by Louis Bamberger and his sister, Caroline Bamberger Fuld. The new building was named in honor of her husband, Feliz Fuld. Jens Frederick Larson, of Hanover, N.H., was the architect; the New York-based Hegeman-Harris Company, the firm which completed a large part of Rockefeller Center, began construction in October 1938. Left to right: Lavinia Bamberger, Albert Einstein, Anne Crawford Flexner (Mrs. Abraham Flexner), Abraham Flexner, J.R. Hardin, and Herbert Maass.

Over the years there has been a great deal of interest in the education reform ideas of Abraham Flexner (1866-1959), the founding Director (1930-39) of the Institute for Advanced Study. Flexner, who became a very influential figure in education reform, put his progressive ideas about education into practice at an early age. In the fall of 1890 he founded, and for the next fifteen years directed, “Mr. Flexner’s School� in Louisville. This highly successful college preparatory school, which attracted the attention of John Dewey and Charles Eliot, served as Flexner’s laboratory for his theories of education: it had no formal curriculum, no formal grades, no system of examinations, and kept no student achievement records.

Below we offer excerpts from a memo Flexner prepared in 1921 for the General Education Board, an educational foundation founded in 1902 by John D. Rockefeller. Flexner, who was associated with the General Education Board for more than twenty years, later developed this memo into an address entitled “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge,� which was published in Harper’s magazine in October 1939. (If you would like a full-text version of this article, please contact the Director’s office.)

THE USEFULNESS OF USELESS KNOWLEDGE
by Abraham Flexner

Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women—old and young—detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering? The world has always been a sorry and confused sort of place—yet poets and artists and scientists have ignored the factors that would, if attended to, paralyze them. From a practical point of view, intellectual and spiritual life is, on the surface, a useless form of activity, in which men indulge because they procure for themselves greater satisfactions than are otherwise obtainable. In this paper I shall concern myself with the question of the extent to which the pursuit of these useless satisfactions proves unexpectedly the source from which undreamed-of utility is derived…

…We may look at this question from two points of view: the scientific and the humanistic or spiritual. Let us take the scientific first. I recall a conversation which I had some years ago with Mr. George Eastman on the subject of use. Mr. Eastman, a wise and gentle farseeing man, gifted with taste in music and art, had been saying to me that he meant to devote his vast fortune to the promotion of education in useful subjects. I ventured to ask him whom he regarded as the most useful worker in science in the world. He replied instantaneously: “Marconi.� I surprised him by saying, “Whatever pleasure we derive from the radio or however wireless and the radio may have added to human life, Marconi’s share was practically negligible.�

I shall not forget his astonishment on this occasion. He asked me to explain. I replied to him somewhat as follows:

“Mr. Eastman, Marconi was inevitable. The real credit for everything that has been done in the field of wireless belongs, as far as such fundamental credit can be definitely assigned to anyone, to Professor Clerk Maxwell, who in 1865 carried out certain abstruse and remote calculations in the field of magnetism and electricity. Maxwell reproduced his abstract equations in a treatise published in 1873. At the next meeting of the British Association Professor H. J. S. Smith of Oxford declared that ‘no mathematician can turn over the pages of these volumes without realizing that they contain a theory which has already added largely to the methods and resources of pure mathematics.’ Other discoveries supplemented Maxwell’s theoretical work during the next fifteen years. Finally in 1887 and 1888 the scientific problem still remaining—the detection and demonstration of the electromagnetic waves which are the carriers of wireless signals—was solved by Heinrich Hertz, a worker in Helmholtz’s laboratory in Berlin. Neither Maxwell nor Hertz had any concern about the utility of their work; no such thought ever entered their minds. They had no practical objective. The inventor in the legal sense was of course Marconi, but what did Marconi invent? Merely the last technical detail, mainly the now obsolete receiving device called coherer, almost universally discarded.�

Hertz and Maxwell could invent nothing, but it was their useless theoretical work which was seized upon by a clever technician and which has created new means for communication, utility, and amusement by which men whose merits are relatively slight have obtained fame and earned millions. Who were the useful men? Not Marconi, but Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. Hertz and Maxwell were geniuses without thought of use. Marconi was a clever inventor with no thought but use.

The mention of Hertz’s name recalled to Mr. Eastman the Hertzian waves, and I suggested that he might ask the physicists of the University of Rochester precisely what Hertz and Maxwell had done; but one thing I said he could be sure of, namely, that they had done their work without thought of use and that throughout the whole history of science most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.
“Curiosity?� asked Mr. Eastman.
“Yes,� I replied, “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. Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times.�

II

What is true of Heinrich Hertz working quietly and unnoticed in a corner of Helmholtz’s laboratory in the later years of the nineteenth century may be said of scientists and mathematicians the world over for several centuries past. We live in a world that would be helpless without electricity. Called upon to mention a discovery of the most immediate and far-reaching practical use we might well agree upon electricity. But who made the fundamental discoveries out of which the entire electrical development of more than one hundred years has come?

The answer is interesting. Michael Faraday’s father was a blacksmith; Michael himself was apprenticed to a bookbinder. In 1812, when he was already twenty-one years of age, a friend took him to the Royal Institution where he heard Sir Humphrey Davy deliver four lectures on chemical subjects. He kept notes and sent a copy of them to Davy. The very next year, 1813, he became an assistant in Davy’s laboratory, working on chemical problems. Two years later he accompanied Davy on a trip to the Continent. In 1825, when he was thirty-four years of age, he became Director of the Laboratory of the Royal Institution where he spent fifty-four years of his life.

Faraday’s interest soon shifted from chemistry to electricity and magnetism, to which he devoted the rest of his active life. Important but puzzling work in this field had been previously accomplished by Oersted, Amp²re, and Wollaston. Faraday cleared away the difficulties which they had left unsolved and by 1841 had succeeded in the task of induction of the electric current. Four years later a second and equally brilliant epoch in his career opened when he discovered the effect of magnetism on polarized light. His earlier discoveries have led to the infinite number of practical applications by means of which electricity has lightened the burdens and increased the opportunities of modern life. His later discoveries have thus far been less prolific of practical results. What difference did this make to Faraday? Not the least. At no period of his unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected…

…In the domain of higher mathematics almost innumerable instances can be cited. For example, the most abstruse mathematical work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the “Non-Euclidian Geometry.� Its inventor, Gauss, though recognized by his contemporaries as a distinguished mathematician, did not dare to publish his work on “Non-Euclidian Geometry� for a quarter of a century. As a matter of fact, the theory of relativity itself with all its infinite practical bearings would have been utterly impossible without the work which Gauss did at Gùttingen.

Again, what is known now as “group theory� was an abstract and inapplicable mathematical theory. It was developed by men who were curious and whose curiosity and puttering led them into strange paths; but “group theory� is today the basis of the quantum theory of spectroscopy, which is in daily use by people who have no idea as to how it came about.

The whole calculus of probability was discovered by mathematicians whose real interest was the rationalization of gambling. It has failed of the practical purpose at which they aimed, but it has furnished a scientific basis for all types of insurance, and vast stretches of nineteenth century physics are based upon it…

III

…I am not for a moment suggesting that everything that goes on in laboratories will ultimately turn to some unexpected practical use or that an ultimate practical use is its actual justification. Much more am I pleading for the abolition of the word “use,� and for the freeing of the human spirit. To be sure, we shall thus free some harmless cranks. To be sure, we shall thus waste some precious dollars. But what is infinitely more important is that we shall be striking the shackles off the human mind and setting it free for the adventures which in our own day have, on the one hand, taken Hale and Rutherford and Einstein and their peers millions upon millions of miles into the uttermost realms of space and, on the other, loosed the boundless energy imprisoned in the atom. What Rutherford and others like Bohr and Millikan have done out of sheer curiosity in the effort to understand the construction of the atom had released forces which may transform human life; but this ultimate and unforseen and unpredictable practical result is not offered as a justification for Rutherford or Einstein or Millikan or Bohr or any of their peers. Let them alone. No educational administrator can possibly direct the channels in which these or other men shall work. The waste, I admit again, looks prodigious. It is not really so. All the waste that could be summed up in developing the science of bacteriology is as nothing compared to the advantages which have accrued from the discoveries of Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Theobald Smith, and scores of others—advantages that could never have accrued if the idea of possible use had permeated their minds. These great artists—for such are scientists and bacteriologists—disseminated the spirit which prevailed in laboratories in which they were simply following the line of their own natural curiosity.

I am not criticizing institutions like schools of engineering or law in which the usefulness motive necessarily predominates. Not infrequently the tables are turned, and practical difficulties encountered in industry or in laboratories stimulate theoretical inquiries which may or may not solve the problems by which they were suggested, but may also open up new vistas, useless at the moment, but pregnant with future achievements, practical and theoretical.

With the rapid accumulation of “useless� or theoretic knowledge a situation has been created in which it has become increasingly possible to attack practical problems in a scientific spirit. Not only inventors, but “pure� scientists have indulged in this sport. I have mentioned Marconi, an inventor, who, while a benefactor to the human race, as a matter of fact merely “picked other men’s brains.� Edison belongs to the same category. Pasteur was different. He was a great scientist; but he was not averse to attacking practical problems—such as the condition of French grapevines or the problems of beer-brewing—and not only solving the immediate difficulty, but also wresting from the practical problem some far-reaching theoretic conclusion, “useless� at the moment, but likely in some unforeseen manner to be “useful� later. Ehrlich, fundamentally speculative in his curiosity, turned fiercely upon the problem of syphilis and doggedly pursued it until a solution of immediate practical use—the discovery of salvarsan—was found. The discoveries of insulin by Banting for use in diabetes and of liver extract by Minot and Whipple for use in pernicious anemia belong in the same category: both were made by thoroughly scientific men, who realized that much “useless� knowledge had been piled up by men unconcerned with its practical bearings, but that the time was now ripe to raise practical questions in a scientific manner.

Thus it becomes obvious that one must be wary in attributing scientific discovery wholly to any one person. Almost every discovery has a long and precarious history. Someone finds a bit here, another a bit there. A third step succeeds later and thus onward till a genius pieces the bits together and makes the decisive contribution. Science, like the Mississippi, begins in a tiny rivulet in the distant forest. Gradually other streams swell its volume. And the roaring river that bursts the dikes is formed from countless sources…

…The considerations upon which I have touched emphasize—if emphasis were needed—the overwhelming importance of spiritual and intellectual freedom. I have spoken of experimental science; I have spoken of mathematics; but what I say is equally true of music and art and of every other expression of the untrammeled human spirit. The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need. And in justifying these without any reference whatsoever, implied or actual, to usefulness we justify colleges, universities, and institutes of research. An institution which sets free successive generations of human souls is amply justified whether or not this graduate or that makes a so-called useful contribution to human knowledge. A poem, a symphony, a painting, a mathematical truth, a new scientific fact, all bear in themselves all the justification that universities, colleges, and institutes of research need or require…

…We make ourselves no promises, but we cherish the hope that the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge will prove to have consequences in the future as in the past. Not for a moment, however, do we defend the Institute on that ground. It exists as a paradise for scholars who, like poets and musicians, have won the right to do as they please and who accomplish most when enabled to do so.

ARE YOU ALLOWED TO DO THAT?

When she began her undergraduate studies in 1961 at the University of Michigan, Karen Uhlenbeck was “lucky enough,� as she puts it, to be in the University’s honors program, which meant that she took very advanced courses as a freshman. Without knowing calculus, she took an honors calculus course and found she was completely at home with the abstract reasoning involved. “I still remember the day,� Uhlenbeck remarked, “in which the teaching assistant, before the professor introduced the idea of taking derivatives by limits, showed the class how, by taking difference quotients and taking the difference to zero, you could get a derivative. I remember the excitement with which I turned to my neighbor and asked, ‘Are you really allowed to do that?’�

It seemed, she explained many years later, too good to be true. “I felt excited about mathematics after about two weeks of that class,� she added. “I had started as a physics major, but this proved to everybody—myself included—that I was a mathematician. I was much more at home with abstract mathematics than I was with anything else I’d ever encountered in life before. I met abstract mathematics somewhere in my third or fourth week of undergraduate freshman calculus, and I’ve been a mathematician ever since.

Uhlenbeck went directly from the University of Michigan to the Courant Institute. She transferred to Brandeis University, where she received her M.A. in 1966 and her Ph.D. in 1968, with Richard Palais (a Member in the School of Mathematics this year) as her thesis advisor. After graduate school she taught for a year at MIT, and then for two years at the University of California at Berkeley. She subsequently held positions at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and Chicago, and the University of Chicago.

In 1988 she accepted her current position as Professor and Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin. During her career she has been a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University; the University of California, Berkeley; Harvard University; the Max-Planck-Institut fÃŒr Mathematik, Bonn; the University of California, San Diego; IHES, Bures-Sur-Yvette, France; and Warwick University, England.

The recipient of numerous awards and honors, including a Sloan Foundation Fellowship and a MacArthur Prize Fellowship, Uhlenbeck is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. She first came to the Institute in 1979-80 as the Albert Einstein Fellow in the School of Mathematics, and returned for a second visiting term in 1995.

The Distinguished Visiting Professor program in the School of Mathematics was begun in 1988 with the support of the Ambrose Monell Foundation, and was designed with two objectives: to define areas of concentrated activity in mathematics and to make it possible to bring to the Institute a distinguished scholar with interests related to those areas. Offering programs that allow intense activity in specific areas fosters the unity of mathematics and the vigor of its relations to other sciences, creating a resource from which the entire mathematical community can profit.

Uhlenbeck’s focus for her year as Distinguished Visiting Professor has been to bring together different viewpoints of geometric partial differential equations. “The last ten years of differential geometry have been dominated by the study of very special geometric partial differential equations,� she stated. “The equations I have in mind include the minimal and constant mean curvature equations, the Yamabe equation, the Kahler-Einstein equation, harmonic maps, and Yang-Mills with all its variations. The origins of the equations vary tremendously, as they come from both very classical geometry and modern high-energy physics, but the equations themselves are clearly very special.�

Uhlenbeck has led a weekly seminar on geometric partial differential equations with Jean Bourgain. The static theory of these equations has had spectacular applications in recent years in geometry and topology, but the time evolution, or wave equations, are very poorly understood. The seminar focused on bringing together geometers with experts like Bourgain in the analysis of evolution equations.

A second seminar which combined the analytic, algebraic and geometric approaches to the theory of integrable systems was organized with the help of Chuu-Lian Terng, who was also a Member in the School of Mathematics this year.

As a third component, Uhlenbeck organized short courses in integrable systems and quantum field theory.

Physics, intricately related to mathematics, provides Uhlenbeck with inspiration for her own research. “Very rarely does a physicist come to a mathematician with a question that the mathematician can answer,� Uhlenbeck commented. “Instead,� she continued, “the mathematician sees the mess that the physicist uses and tries to figure it out. The role of mathematics is to abstract the ideas from their context and streamline them.� This allows ideas to be used far from their field of origin, such as the use of the Monte Carlo method, a statistical tool developed from casinos, in computer calculations of gauge theory in modern physics.

Along with a particularly committed group of her peers, Uhlenbeck is actively concerned with improving the quality of mathematics education and with encouraging women to develop careers in mathematics, which has traditionally been a field with very few women. Uhlenbeck was a founding member of the IAS/Park City Mathematics Institute (PCMI), a program of the Institute for Advanced Study. This multi-level program brings together researchers, graduate students, undergraduate students, and high school teachers, encouraging their interaction as essential to the optimal functioning of the mathematical enterprise. In addition, since its inception in 1993, Uhlenbeck has been a co-leader of the Mentoring Program for Women in Mathematics, a component of the PCMI. Now coming into its sixth year, the program is designed to offer support to young women mathematicians. “It gives them a leg up professionally,� Uhlenbeck commented. “An important component of the program is simply straight, hard, professional advancement. The focus on mathematics is intense. In addition to the course work, senior women can make progress with their research, and for everyone there is the benefit of making useful contacts with other women. For the younger women, this may be the first time that they have interacted on a serious, professional level with other women in mathematics.�

NEWS OF THE INSTITUTE COMMUNITY

GLEN BOWERSOCK, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, was recently named Pr¡sident de Comit¡ scientifique de la Maison de l’Orient M¡diterran¡en ö Lyon. This major research institution is devoted to research and excavation in the countries of the eastern Mediterranean, and is supported jointly by the University of Lyon and the Centre National de la Recherche scientifique. In early April Professor Bowersock was in Nicosia to deliver the Annual Lecture on the History of Cyprus, at the invitation of the Cultural Foundation of the Bank of Cyprus.

CHRISTIAN HABICHT, Professor in the School of Historical Studies, has recently published Athens from Alexander to Antony (Harvard University Press, 1997). The book has been chosen as the winner of the Criticos Prize for 1997 by the London Hellenic Society.

A French translation of School of Social Science Professor JOAN SCOTT’s recent book Only Paradoxes to Offer was published in January as La citoyenne paradoxale: Les f¡ministes fran¥aises et les droits de l’homme (Albin Michel, 1998).

ROBERT LANGLANDS recently participated in a festschrift for Gunter Harder, a professor at the Mathematisches Institute der Universitçt Bonn and a former Member in the School of Mathematics.

EDWARD WITTEN gave the 71st annual Josiah Willard Gibbs Lecture, an invited lecture of the American Mathematical Society, on January 7, 1998, at the AMS Joint Mathematics Meeting in Baltimore, Maryland. Professor Witten’s topic was M Theory.

Professor OLEG GRABAR’s article on the esthetics of Persian art was published in The Art of Interpreting: Papers in Art History (Penn State University Press, 1995).

Professor ROBERT MacPHERSON, School of Mathematics, is presently serving as Chairman of the Board on Mathematical Sciences of the National Research Council.

During 1997-1998 a number of School of Social Science Professor Emeritus ALBERT HIRSCHMAN’s books and articles appeared in translation: A Propensity to Self-Subversion was published in Italian (Harvard University Press); Exit, Voice, and Loyalty was published in Hungarian (Harvard University Press); The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph was published in Croatian (Princeton University Press); The Rhetoric of Reaction was published in Swedish (The Belknap Press of Harvard University); and “Melding the Public and Private Spheres: Taking Commensality Seriously� was translated into German and published in Austria.

MARC KAMIONKOWSKI, a long-term Member in the School of Natural Sciences from 1991-1995, was awarded the 1998 Helen B. Warner prize by the American Astronomical Society. The prize is awarded, usually annually, for a significant contribution to observational or theoretical astronomy during the preceding five years by an astronomer who has not yet reached his or her 36th birthday. Professor Kamionkowski, who is 32, was cited for “his contributions to progress on a wide range of theoretical topics, including nuclear reactions related to the solar neutrino puzzle, the detectability of alternative dark matter candidates, phase transitions and topological defects in cosmology, the polarization of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background, and microlensing.� Kamionkowski, presently an assistant professor of physics at Columbia University, stated that “the opportunity to work at the Institute certainly helped me accomplish the work for which this prize was given.�

TWO NEW TRUSTEES APPOINTED TO INSTITUTE BOARD

Martin Chooljian and Immanuel Kohn have accepted invitations to become members of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Study. Both men have been involved with the intellectual activities of the Institute and supportive of its work for a number of years.

Martin Chooljian is the President of CH Capital Corporation in Princeton, New Jersey. He was formerly the President of Penn Corporation, of which he was a founder, and the Treasurer of Litton Industries. Mr. Chooljian has had a life-long interest in physics, and the work of the Helen and Martin Chooljian Members in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute has been in the area of particle physics. Chooljian received both his B.S. (1952, cum laude), and M.B.A. (1954) degrees from Harvard University.

Immanuel Kohn is Senior Partner and Chairman of the Executive Committee of Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, New York, and is a graduate of Harvard University (1949, summa cum laude) and Yale Law School (1953, cum laude). With his wife, Vera, he has been an active member of the Friends of the Institute for many years. The Kohns have been generous in their support of the School of Historical Studies, of which Mr. Kohn’s father, Hans Kohn, was a visiting Member in 1948 and again in 1995.

NEW PROGRAM IN THEORETICAL BIOLOGY TO BEGIN THIS FALL

This fall the Institute will begin a research initiative in theoretical biology, made possible in part by a new Initiatives Fund generously contributed to by Institute Trustee Leon Levy. The Initiatives Fund was established to provide greater flexibility in exploring promising new areas not already represented within the Institute. MARTIN NOWAK, presently Professor of Mathematical Biology and Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University, will come to the Institute to lead the new program. Nowak, who holds degrees in biochemistry and mathematics, was educated at the University of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. with highest honors in 1989. For the past nine years at Oxford he has worked closely with Professor Sir ROBERT MAY, a Member in the School of Natural Sciences in 1971-72, developing a wide variety of mathematical models to address a broad range of problems in evolutionary biology and infectious diseases.

FRIENDS OF THE INSTITUTE

The Friends of the Institute have enjoyed a busy winter season. Jonathan Haslam, a Member in the School of Historical Studies, gave the Friends’ Forum which was entitled “The Expansion of NATO and Russia Resurgent.� Dr. Haslam, a Fellow and Director of Studies in History at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is the author of several monographs and numerous articles. He recently completed a biography of E.H. Carr, due to be published later this year. Donald Wilson moderated the Forum. Fireside Chats were given by Friends John Thomson who led off in January with “The Diana Effect,� and Susan Wilson who spoke on “Sex, Society and Education: What Should We Teach Our Children?� Friends also attended lectures by Institute Faculty members Patricia Crone, Joan Scott and Enrico Bombieri, concerts by Artist-in-Residence Robert Taub (who also gave pre-concert lectures), as well as films and other special events. The Friends welcome new members. If you would like information on becoming a Friend of the Institute, please call Pamela Hughes at (609) 734-8204.

The Institute extends a very warm welcome
to the following new Friends of the Institute:

Barbara F. Graham and Theodore Sager Meth
Elizabeth and Woody Littlefield
Muriel and William Primm
Tommye and James Schiro
Saul Skoler
Margaret and Robert Slighton
Wendy and Andy Steginsky
Antoinette Delruelle and Joshua Steiner

PROFESSOR SIR ROBERT McCREDIE MAY

This article is the first in a series featuring former Members at the Institute for Advanced Study.

When Robert May came to the Institute for Advanced Study in 1971-72 as a Member in the School of Natural Sciences, he was a theoretical physicist who held a chair (gained at the age of 33) as Professor of Physics at Sydney University. Born in Sydney in 1936, he trained as a theoretical physicist/applied mathematician, receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Sydney, and working with Schafroth, who had been an assistant of Wolfgang Pauli (a regular visitor to the Institute). Influenced while at Sydney by the famous Australian ecologist L.C. Birch, May became fascinated by the problems of the biological world. It was during the early 1970s that he turned from physics to theoretical ecology, “blundering,� as he himself has said, “into the golden age of mathematical ecology.�

“My year at the Institute was critical,� May commented. “I had the freedom to pursue ideas and to talk with a wide variety of people. It was the Romantic age of ecology in the sense that a whole range of questions were all being phrased in more-or-less analytic terms by people who didn’t have quantitative backgrounds—or computers—to use in exploring these questions. I developed a friendship and collaboration with Robert MacArthur, then a professor at Princeton University and the leading theorist among ecologists in the world at that time.� In 1973 May was appointed Professor of Biology—and later Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology—at Princeton University, where he remained until 1988.

“It was in 1974 that his first decisive paper for mathematical ecology appeared,� commented Oxford University Professor of Mathematical Biology Martin Nowak, who has worked with Sir Robert for the past nine years, “and that was the paper that basically introduced chaos into biological ecodynamics. May described an equation that was so simple you could study it with a pocket calculator. This equation had been known for some time to produce ‘random numbers.’ John von Neumann, in fact, used it as a random number generator. But no one appreciated that there was a deeper meaning behind it—a completely new world. May made this point. This was his great contribution: to explain that very simple models in ecology can have very complicated dynamics. And the very complicated dynamics in nature which we observe can actually be a consequence of very simple basic principles.� May was thus one of the pioneers of chaos, and the first to describe chaos in biological systems. “In some ways,� Nowak continued, “May created mathematical ecology. There were certainly impressive forerunners, but with May it really became an interesting field.�

In the late 1970s May began a collaboration with Roy Anderson, currently at Oxford. The two completely revised the subject of mathematical epidemiology, working on mathematical models for how diseases spread in populations. Again, there were forerunners—papers in this field had been published in the 1920s—but with May and Anderson “it became something very different,� Nowak says. “They wrote several extremely influential papers on the interactions of infectious diseases and populations and described how infectious diseases spread in populations.� Their work influenced thought and practice in basic areas such as vaccination strategies for infectious diseases and the interactions between HIV and the immune system.

In 1988 May left Princeton for Oxford, where he became Royal Society research professor at the University of Oxford and Imperial College, London. This professorship enables the recipient to do research full-time; there are only eighteen Royal Society chairs in the country. In June 1995 May was named to one of the top United Kingdom advisory posts, accepting a five-year appointment as Chief Scientific Advisor to the government and Head of the Office of Science and Technology. In this very public and highly visible post May has become deeply involved in many topics at the intersection of biology and public policy, ranging from debates over biodiversity to the epidemiology of AIDS.

Sir Robert’s current research interests range across a fairly wide area of applied mathematics and population biology/population genetics. Most of these interests are unified by a concern with the dynamics of interacting populations, and how such populations respond to change (natural or human-created). Specific interests include: new ideas in nonlinear forecasting (deriving in part from work on “chaos�); theoretical and empirical studies of epidemiology and immunology (in particular, the study of mathematical models for the interaction between pathogens and the immune system, with a view to understanding the long and variable interval between infection with HIV and the onset of AIDS); the origins, maintenance, and possible implication in the reduction of the diversity of life on Earth; a range of specific problems in conservation biology; general questions in population dynamics, particularly in relation to pest control and to the release of genetically engineered organisms; various topics in evolutionary biology; and spatial chaos.

Over a period of many years, May’s broad range of interests have led to his active involvement in a number of organizations, as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London; past President of the British Ecological Society; a past member of the British Cabinet’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology; a past member of the Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Institution; a past Trustee of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew; a past member of the Joint Nature Conservancy Councils; and an Executive Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation. Sir Robert is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences. He holds honorary degrees from several universities, including Uppsala, Yale and Sydney.

In 1996 the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded Sir Robert the Crafoord Prize in the biosciences, with particular emphasis on ecology. The Crafoord Prize, which carries an award of $500,000, was established for basic research in several fields not covered by the Nobel Prizes: mathematics, astronomy, the geosciences, and the biosciences. In 1988 Institute faculty member Pierre Deligne, School of Mathematics, shared the prize with Alexandre Grothendieck of the University of Montpellier.

THE INSTITUTE'S PLANNED GIVING PROGRAM

For well over fifty years alumni, trustees and friends have maintained a tradition of giving to the Institute for Advanced Study, and these gifts have taken many different forms. There are outright gifts such as cash, tangible personal property, and securities, and there are pledges, bequests, and planned gifts. Among the planned gift arrangements available at the Institute are a charitable remainder trust, a charitable lead trust and a pooled income fund. Appreciated stock, property, pensions, IRAs and other deferred benefit plans may be used to make a gift.

The Planned Giving Committee was established in 1996 to inform members of the Institute community and other prospective donors about the Institute’s planned giving program. Ralph E. Hansmann, Institute Trustee Emeritus, served as the first chairman and Charles and Rosanna Jaffin, longtime Friends of the Institute, as co-chairs. Mr. Hansmann retired in 1998, and Martin A. Chooljian, Institute Trustee, assumed the role of chairman.
One of the first actions of the Planned Giving Committee was to create the Einstein Legacy Society to honor all those who have made a planned gift to the Institute and all those who have included a gift to the Institute in their will. The Society’s inaugural meeting included a private concert by Artist-in-Residence Robert Taub, with a luncheon afterwards in the Fuld Hall Common Room.

In addition to guiding the Institute’s planned giving program, the Planned Giving Committee seeks to educate the greater Institute community on the many different types of planned gifts and the advantages of such gifts. Legal and financial assistance are available for those considering a planned gift to the Institute. In addition, the Einstein Legacy Society and the Planned Giving Committee have hosted two educational seminars this year:

“The Excitement of Unique Contributions� featured William A. Schreyer, Chairman Emeritus of Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc., who shared his and his family’s vision and commitment concerning philanthropy. With the assistance of Thomas J. Kozlowski, Jr. and John J. Brown, participants learned how arrangements available through planned giving make it possible for individuals to make larger gifts than they thought possible.

“Planning to Preserve Family Wealth� featured Charles W. Collier, Senior Planned Giving Officer at Harvard University. Using a case study, Mr. Collier explored new ways of thinking about the estate planning process, the purpose of an inheritance, and the role of philanthropy in our lives. Participants actively joined in this discussion of how philanthropy and the estate planning process can reflect our core values.

For further information on the Institute’s planned giving program, please contact Anne Baxter Humes, Institutional Advancement Officer, (609) 734-8216.

J. RICHARDSON DILWORTH
June 9, 1916 – December 29, 1997

We report with deep regret the passing of J. Richardson Dilworth on December 29, 1997. Elected a Trustee of the Institute for Advanced Study in 1964, Mr. Dilworth subsequently served on all of the major committees of the Board. In 1976 he became President and Vice Chairman of the Board, and in 1981, Chairman. He retired as Trustee and Chairman in 1986, after twenty-two years on the Institute’s Board, but continued to serve as a Trustee Emeritus.

James D. Wolfensohn, who succeeded Mr. Dilworth as Chairman of the Board, stated that “Dick Dilworth was loved and admired, both for his character and his intellect. He made unique contributions to the development of the Institute and had a remarkable ability to cross the boundaries of business to an understanding of academic life and research at its highest level. He set the course which we are now following, and his work will long be remembered.�

A philanthropist and retired financier, Mr. Dilworth was a chairman of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and a member of the Museum’s board from 1961-1990; a member of the Yale Corporation from 1959 to 1986 (for the last 13 of those years he was the board’s leader, with the title of Senior Fellow); a trustee of Rockefeller University from 1960 to 1991; and a director of Chrysler Corporation, R.H. Macy & Company, the Squibb Corporation and more than a dozen other companies and financial institutions. He was the senior financial advisor to the Rockefeller family from 1958 until 1981, and a longtime director of Rockefeller Center, serving as its chairman from 1966 to 1982. Prior to his association with the Rockefeller family, he was a partner in the investment banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.

David Rockefeller spoke at the memorial service held for Mr. Dilworth in Princeton on January 10, 1998. “Always straightforward. Always honest. Always sincere,� he stated. “In a world where mediocrity, greed, dishonesty and lack of vision abound, a few individuals stand out as a shining light and inspiration to the rest of us. Dick Dilworth was one of those individuals. Though a man of great modesty who shunned public recognition, Dick was a doer who brought strength, integrity and success to everything he touched.�

A native of Hewlett, New York, Mr. Dilworth attended St. Mark’s School in Southborough, Mass., and in 1938 graduated from Yale University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He received his law degree from Yale Law School in 1942. During World War II he was a Navy staff officer in the Pacific and elsewhere. He is survived by his wife, the former Elizabeth Cushing, their daughter Lucy, and two sons: Joseph Jr. and Charles. Another daughter, Melissa, died in 1991.

J. RICHARDSON DILWORTH
George F. Kennan

In the passing of J. Richardson (Dick) Dilworth the Institute lost one of the most remarkable, most deeply respected, and most valuable of its friends. A glance at some of Dick’s qualities suffices to justify that statement.

He was, above all, a man of total and unshakable personal integrity. This was never questioned by anyone who knew him.

He was a man of great perspicacity and soundness of judgement, all of it supported, particularly in his later years, by the rich experiences of his occupancy of a long series of distinguished and highly responsible positions.

He was outstandingly a loyal and generous friend. And indeed, his initial approach to anyone was invariably one of courtesy, patience, and readiness to understand. But when confronted with trickiness or deviousness in any form, his reaction could be quick, firm, and unmistakable. Even in more pleasant relationships, where he felt that the situation demanded a negative response, he did not hesitate to give it, frankly and bluntly. One was never left in doubt as to where he stood.

Finally, for all these fine traits of character Dick was, almost to a fault, the soul of modesty—the most unassuming of men. Strutting, posing, or trying to impress others were totally foreign to his character. He was not displeased, I suspect, when others recognized his qualities and abilities. But he would never court the recognition.

He was not alone, of course, in any of these characteristics. But the combination of all of them in a single person was more rare; and it is not easy to find the fitting word for it. The quality of greatness, as used in the traditional European sense of a “great man,� is one Americans hesitate to apply to one of their own kind, particularly when the subject is still alive. And indeed, any use of it here would be for a peculiarly American idea of greatness. But in this sense I would not hesitate to say that Dick Dilworth was a great man—a great American gentleman. And this, to my mind, is the way the Institute should remember him, and continue to mourn his absence from its company.