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