The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 11

INTRODUCTION
The Fields Institute
Turns Twenty-Five
Elaine McKinnon Riehm
After twenty-five years, memories can be unreliable, details
fade, and emphasis shifts. That is why historians prefer to
consult archives and research libraries, where dated and signed
documents are authenticated, put into order, and preserved by
professional librarians.
But the history of the Fields Institute comes principally
as a collection of stories—stories that draw on individual
memories that have sharpened in some details and grown
uncertain in others. Memory being fallible, these accounts
may overlap in some details or diverge in others. Together,
however, they present a portrait of an institution that was
boldly conceived against the odds, but that has survived
and flourished. As several authors here attest, one constant
unknown that always hung in the air was long-term funding,
making long-term planning difficult.
Taken together, these stories describe an organic
institution that has evolved under the leadership of its
numerous directors, but has always held to its original wide
definition of mathematics. There was some controversy over