As Oppenheimer writes in a recent director's report, "The Institute, in short, is devoted to learning, in the double sense of the continued education of the individual, and of the intellectual enterprise on which he is embarked."

Despite the excellence of the Institute, it is clear that it is in no sense of the word a university. It teaches neither Greek nor Latin. There is no English department, no chemistry laboratories and no astronomical observatory. There are only the School of Mathematics and the School of Historical Studies; the Institute does not pretend to a complete coverage of all, or even a few, fields of learning.

The obvious question is, "Why did the Institute come to center around mathematics and history?" The answer lies partially in the letter addressed by the Founders, Louis Bemberger and Mrs.. Felix Fuld, to the first Board of Trustees which said, in part, "... The primary purpose of the pursuit of advanced learning and exploration in fields of pure science and high scholarship to the utmost degree that the facilities of the institution and the ability of the faculty and students permit."

The endowment of the school is only about 18 million dollars, and therefore it would be quite impossible to maintain an institution which attained adequacy or excellence in a large number of subjects. To determine what subjects the Institute should, therefore, undertake, the meaning of "advanced" must be considered.

In a recent report, a committee states that "what makes study advanced is not only the native talent and originality of the investigator, but the fact that he must have learned a great deal in order to conduct it. This knowledge, this learning, will have taken a long time to acquire, perhaps much of a lifetime."

Modern mathematics and the study of history, among others, certainly fall into this category, but other considerations were necessary to finally determine the choice of these two disciplines. One such consideration was the fact that the Institution, in the field of mathematics and in specialized areas of historical studies, could attain a certain preeminence with a relatively small staff.

Certainly this has been done in mathematics. Modern mathematics is highly complex, extremely difficult and abstract. Also, as an Institute report says, "It is self-contained, self-sustaining, and almost self-generative." A small body of professors, combined with a relatively small group of students, or members, can create a community of mutual discussion and consultation in which the entire field comes under surveillance. The Institute claims with almost complete justification, "A mathematician may come to the Institute and be quite confident that he can find out anything really important in current work in the field."

In special areas, the School of Historical Studies may make a similar claim. Although it is not so large as its mathematics counterpart, its faculty is equally distinguished. Such men as Sir Llewellyn Woodward, Homer Thompson, Kennan, and Ernst Kantorowicz make the School one of the finest in the country. The School of Mathematics is larger by about 75 members to 25 members partly because there are more funds available for mathematical study than for historical work and partly because the em- inence of the early mathematical faculty, which included the late Albert Einstein, gave the Institute a brilliant reputation in that area.

The final consideration involved in the choice of fields centers around the opportunity which the small, isolated institute community can provide a scholar. The advantages which the mathematician and the theoretical physicist can derive from informal consultation and reflective study are manifold. The historian's need for this same community of scholarship, although not so great as that of the mathematician, is nevertheless considerable. Also, the fact that foundations and governments are rather reluctant to spend much money on historical projects made the initial Board of Trustees feel that the Institute might do a great service by making some of its endowment available to these "advanced" scholars.

In recent history of the Institute there are two striking examples of this educational theory in practice. The first is the Institute's abandoning the Electronic Computer Project. This project was begun in 1946 by John van Neumann as an attempt to give the mathematician and physicist a high speed computer. At first the task was novel and presented many high-level problems which only a mathematician and physicist of van Neumann's maturity and brilliance could cope with. In 1952, the machine was completed, and applied physicists in various companies began to improve upon the original until the Institute decided that it was no longer part of its purpose to maintain the old machine as merely a laboratory instrument. Thus, in the summer of this year, the computer was turned over to Princeton University. It had ceased to be an object of "advanced study."

School of Historical Studies

Another example of the theory of education is furnished by the combination in 1949 of the School of Humanistic Studies and the School of Economics and Politics into the School of Historical Studies. The Institute felt that the study of economics and politics was not ideally suited to the approach to learning which the Institute should take. The Institute has only limited facilities for statistical analysis and is some-what divorced by both location and philosophy from current affairs. In such an atmosphere the systematic study of economics and politics seemed somewhat out of place.

In the belief that "the unifying and invigorating element of work in history and the humanities must be the conscious and scrupulous use of the historical method" the School of Historical Studies was formed. Inside this School the subjects range from Greek archeology--where the Institute enjoys a reputation comparable to that of the School of Mathematics--to modern political history. In between, the Institute admits that there are many "bizarre lacunae," but nevertheless, the historical method provides both a unifying basis and a criterion for possible expansion in coming years if finances permit it.

But by and large, however, the community is a closed one. Members are carefully chosen on the basis of their work and are given funds with which they can spend a year at the Institute. With the new community of modernistic, utilitarian houses which have been recently completed and lie within a short walk of the Institute and its few seminars and office buildings, almost all members may live on the school's location.

An Intellectual Oasis