Flexner wrote his essay, "The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge," which really is a catching title.
Flexner does refer obliquely to atomic power, but he wasn't aware, I think, that this
Flexner felt that basic research scholarship is good as it is.
Flexner intercepted that letter, and he wrote back.
Flexner Report, this is wandering away from standards for a moment and back to computing.
Simon Flexner was the fourth director of the Rockefeller Institute, now Rockefeller University.
Bernard Flexner was very seriously involved in politics.
As Flexner writes, curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful-- although, somebody said we have to distinguish
And Flexner , in some sense, invented that industry with one small institute.
Abraham Flexner who really, the Institute was his idea and it was based on the concept of the usefulness of useless knowledge, that if you just let people work on whatever they
First is Abraham Flexner , who's a person that I think we should all know better, the first director of the Institute at Princeton
So who was Abraham Flexner , this man that we basically forgot about?
And Abraham Flexner , he was the one who was able to go to Johns Hopkins University at a very young age, at age 17; graduated in classics in two years;
And then Flexner started to think about universities too.
That's the Flexner Report. The Flexner Report went and looked at how medicine was being taught to doctors.
because he must have known Flexner well.
And I think we can revisit Flexner 's argument.
And this is something that Flexner was very much aware of it.
It's great to be a co-author with Abraham Flexner , who indeed needs-- I think, in some sense, we have to resurrect his legacy.
So it's the perfect case to demonstrate the title of Flexner , that this kind of useless knowledge, whether it's abstract mathematical logic
and then became famous by this so-called "Flexner Report," a report he issued in 1910 that looked at all 155 medical schools in the US
And Flexner here writes, in 1939, I think very perceptively, that "50 years from now, historians
Well, the argument that Flexner makes is so powerful.
But curiosity, as Flexner writes, it goes back-- it's an outstanding characteristic of modern thinking.
And this might actually be the reason why we have this slightly negative quote about Flexner .
But there are some extra layers, and that's exactly where Flexner -- and I'm trying to add to it-- is we know that basic science develops new tools and techniques.
And this might be something I feel that the only point where my points differ with Flexner .
here and across the world, but I remind you that Flexner wrote about all of this in October '39, which was, as I said, not the best of times.
So then I looked in the "Ultimate Quotable Einstein," which has almost 600 pages of Einstein quotations on everything, if there was anything about Flexner .
And both of them actually were, at that point, really developed under his own eyes in the Institute for Advanced Study that was set up by Abraham Flexner .
But little did Einstein or Flexner , who
But if you see how federal and, for instance, support for research has developed-- and I can imagine Flexner coming back
And I think we have to cross that bridge, and again, make the case that Flexner makes in an extremely powerful way.
They should be read again, so I'm very happy that I'm now on this kind of book tour with my famous co-author, Abraham Flexner .
But they were part of the medical community and the Flexner Report shoved them out the door.