The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 73

CHAPTER 11
From Seedling to Maturity
John Gardner
“Gradually ... Board members were able to develop the sense that
all members, no matter where they came from, served on the
Board in order to advance the Institute as an Institute.”
I remember attending a dinner in Burlington at the home of
Carl and Elaine Riehm, where a number of people present were
of incipient interest in a mathematical institute to be located in
Ontario. This dinner was prior to any formal commitment to
the creation of an institute, but the individual seeds that were
germinating in the minds of various mathematicians combined
to produce a crop that became the Fields Institute for Research
in Mathematical Sciences. I was there, I believe, because of
my friendship with David Brillinger, who was also at dinner.
The Role of the Board of Governors at the
University of Toronto
At the time of the dinner and during the years immediately
afterwards, including much of the period during which the