The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 143

CHAPTER 21
An Anecdote
Victor P. Snaith
“I have found the Fields Institute the most co-operative and easy
institute with which to arrange a program and its resulting
conference proceedings.”
I have always cherished a soft spot for the Fields Institute,
dating from the pre-Fields decade when a committee of about
ten of us, led by the late Jerry Marsden, strove to persuade
the Ontario politicians to establish a mathematical sciences
research institute. In fact, during my spell as chairman of that
committee, I clocked up several mildly amusing, largely futile,
encounters with politicians and civil servants. These ranged
from subterranean meetings in Queen’s Park, which invariably
commenced with the ritual exchanging of business cards and
ended with mutual congratulations in praise of the status
quo, to being called up to confront a bipartisan government
committee on science during an Ottawa winter white-out and
attended by a simultaneous translator who backslid gradually
into a sort of bilingual stand-up comedy routine.