Memories of a Key Meeting 25
But in 1992, the search for a permanent base for the Fields Institute was expected to be somewhat divisive.
I do not recall the composition of the selection committee, but I do remember a key meeting of this committee with the Director and other administrative members of the Fields Institute, together with administrative and scientific representatives from the affiliated universities. According to a note I seem to have retained, it took place on Saturday, March 27, 1993, 12:30 to 3:00 p. m., in the Council Chamber of the University of Toronto. Everyone present was given the opportunity to address the committee. Jerry Marsden, looking every bit the director of a serious research institute, described with assurance the progress Fields had made in its first year of operation. My memories otherwise seem to be confined to colleagues from my own university. University of Toronto Mathematics Chair, Steve Halperin, outlined with admirable clarity his ambitions for the Department of Mathematics, for mathematics, and for the Fields Institute.
But it was the words of Rob Prichard, then in his third year as President of the University of Toronto, that are most indelibly imprinted on my mind. He spoke with a passion that seemed to transfix everyone present— of the fundamental importance of mathematics to the modern world, and in particular, to a country, a province and a university. He included words to the effect that as the University leader, he would personally be very honoured to host the Fields Institute, and that he would do anything he could to make it a centre of which the affiliated universities and the entire province could be proud.
I believe that he also added, with endearing modesty, that he had wanted to study mathematics as an undergraduate, and had much enjoyed first-year calculus, but that he had met his Waterloo in the calculus of several variables. Well, it could be argued that multivariable calculus is the most difficult course