| This dissertation analyzes the development of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and set it in the context of American society and politics in the early 1930s. The Institute, an intellectual retreat for American scholars, emerged from the collaboration of its first director, foundation executive Abraham Flexner, and Newark merchant Louis Bamberger, who provided the initial endowment. Flexner hoped that the Institute, by providing scholars with the opportunity to escape from external distractions to concentrate on research alone, would restore the nineteenth century German concept of an aristocracy of intellect to American higher education. For Bamberger, the establishment of the Institute was symbolic of both Jewish assimilation and the responsibility of wealth.;The Institute's greatest contribution in the 1930s was the emergence of its School of Mathematics as a major center of scientific research. The appointment of Princeton University mathematician Oswald Veblen as the Institute's first professor fostered close ties to the scientific establishment and encouraged cooperation with the renowned Mathematics Department of Princeton. The appointment of Albert Einstein brought the School of Mathematics legitimacy in the eyes of scientists at home and abroad. Moreover, Einstein's status as a refugee from Nazi Germany, as well as his and Veblen's commitment to the rescue of other emigres, drew the Institute into the political arena. Though conceived before advent of Nazism in Europe, the Institute succeeded as a scientific institution primarily because of the unintended convergence of European refugee scholars in Princeton. Even before the School of Mathematics formally began in the fall of 1933, its faculty and staff were deeply involved in the American effort to cope with the European exodus. By 1935, the faculty would include a core of eminent emigres and its yearly fellowship program would provide refuge for many more. In its focus upon the Institute's role in the rescue of refugee intellectuals, the dissertation emphasizes the symbiotic relationship between science and society. |
