The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 39

CHAPTER 3
Early Pioneers
Steve Halperin
“... while Canada had many excellent individual mathematicians,
the way that mathematics was being conducted worldwide was
changing, with a more collaborative and multidisciplinary
approach, and ... Canada needed a place which could focus on
such research.”
The date of birth of the Fields Institute is hard to determine
precisely. But the idea of a mathematics research institute that
would draw on the considerable strength of the large number
of mathematicians scattered across the universities of southern
Ontario was in the air in the late 1980s. The impetus came
chiefly from three universities: the University of Waterloo, the
University of Toronto, and McMaster University.
In the fall of 1991, NSERC struck a review committee to
evaluate the notion of such an institute. There were doubters.
In as much as the Centre de Recherches Mathématiques
(CRM) already existed, was a second research institute
necessary or even wise? As might be expected, there were some