Abraham Flexner

Abraham Flexner (born November 13, 1866 in Louisville , Kentucky , † September 21, 1959 in Falls Church , Virginia ) was an American educator and science organizer. He was founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study from 1930 to 1939 .

Abraham Flexner

Life

Flexner was the brother of the physician and professor at the University of Pennsylvania Simon Flexner (1863-1946). He studied at Johns Hopkins University with a bachelor's degree in 1885, at Harvard University and the University of Berlin without further degrees. After graduation, he founded a private school in Louisville, where he implemented his own educational ideas, with which he was successful and attracted more attention. He attached great importance to personal support, small classes and practical teaching.

Flexner's book The American College , which was in part very critical of higher education in the United States, caught the attention of the President of the Carnegie Foundation Henry S. Pritchett (1857–1939), who commissioned him with a report on medical education in the United States, though Flexner himself had no medical training. From 1908 he worked for the Carnegie Foundation . His 1910 Flexner Report, commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation, on medical education in the United States led to extensive reforms in the training of medical professionals in the United States. Flexner himself was involved with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation , whose General Education Board he was a member from 1912 to 1925, from 1917 as its secretary. It also followed up with a report on medical education in Europe.

In 1930 he founded the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton with the businessman and philanthropist Louis Bamberger (1855-1944) from Newark and was its first director. In its time the institute was a refuge for a large number of scholars expelled from Europe by the National Socialists. Flexner brought Albert Einstein to the institute , among others .

In 1926 he became commander of the Legion of Honor . From 1927 to 1928 he was a Rhodes Lecturer at Oxford University . He has received numerous honorary doctorates, including from the University of Berlin, Princeton and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore , Maryland . In 1927 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Fonts

• The American College, New York, Century 1908
• Medical Education in the US and Canada, Report to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, New York 1910
• Medical Education in Europe, Report to the Carnegie Fondation, New York 1912
• Prostitution in Europe, New York, Century 1920
• A modern school, New York, General Education Board 1916
• A modern college, New York, Doubleday 1923
• Medical education, a comparative study, Macmillan 1925
• Do Americans really value education?, Harvard University Press 1927
• Universities- American, English, German, Oxford University Press 1930
• The usefulness of useless knowledge, Harper's Magazine 1939
• I remember, an autobiography, Simon and Schuster 1940
• Henry S. Pritchett, a biography, Columbia University Press 1943
• Daniel Coit Gilman : Founder of the American Type of University, Harcourt Brace 1946

literature

• Thomas Neville Bonner: Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning , Johns Hopkins University Press 2002
• Michael Nevins: Abraham Flexner: A Flawed American Icon , iUniverse, 2010
• Paul Starr: The Social Transformation of American Medicine , Basic Books 1982
• SC Wheatley: The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and Medical Education , University of Wisconsin Press 1989

Web links

• Literature by and about Abraham Flexner in the WorldCat bibliographic database
• Biography in the Encyclopedia of Education