The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 13

Introduction
xi
spanned the twentieth century. The two are offset in time,
however, by six decades: the Institute was established in 1992;
Fields died in 1932.
But they are linked in geographical proximity—that of
being in the same place at widely different times. During the
thirty years when Fields taught mathematics at the University
of Toronto, he always lived in rooms on streets that bordered
the University: Huron Street, St. George, Sussex Avenue, all
now subsumed by the University itself in its western expansion.
For many years, Fields was active in the Royal Canadian
Institute, then located in an old house at 198 College Street,
just east of St. George, where he was responsible for creating a
reading room modelled on one he knew as a graduate student
in the 1880s at the Johns Hopkins University. Fields sat in the
bay window and watched the College streetcars trundle along
just as they do past the Institute today. Fields’ life in Toronto
was bounded by Bloor St. on the north, College St. on the
south, Spadina Ave. on the west, and Queen’s Park on the
east. His neighbourhood then is that of the Fields Institute
now.
In many other significant but ephemeral ways, the mapping
of John Charles Fields and the Fields Institute is exact despite
the slippage in time.
Queen’s Park was as important to Fields as it is today
to the Institute. He led many delegations there, requesting
money—for direct research, for establishing a graduate
faculty with emphasis on research, and for funding the 1924
International Congress of Mathematicians that he organized
in Toronto. Although he had some success, he also had many
failures. The Premier of Ontario, George William Ross, once
flatly declared that he “was not in favour of making our
university a post-graduate school.” Fields, of course, was.
His passion for research led him to explore all possible
sources of funding, including personal philanthropy in the