学术大师何以造就

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中国有能力创办世界一流研究院 　　邹恒甫（长江讲座教授） http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2005-04/25/content_221381.htm 　武汉大学高级研究中心主任、博士生导师。他是新中国成立后的第一个哈佛大学经济学博士,也是第一个进入世界银行研究部的中国高级经济学家。目前,已在国际经济 学界权威杂志上发表了40多篇论文,在宏观经济学领域作出了突出贡献。入选由诺贝尔经济学奖得主罗伯特·蒙代尔担任主编的《世界商业评论》评选年度“中国最具影响力的经济学家”。 这里是邹恒甫于2005年3月28日在人民大会堂的一小小部分发言. 　　 陈至立国务委员、十一位部长、各位大学校长和书记、各位(三百多位)长江学者： 中国有句名言 盛名之下,其实难副。我们这些搞经济、金融科学的,同诺贝尔经济学奖获得者詹姆斯·赫克曼、罗伯特·蒙代尔一起,受聘为首届长江学者讲座教授,羞愧呀! (掌声雷动) 　　大学需要大师。上次我和北京大学的张维迎说, 其实你在光华管理学院瞎搞改革只要请四个人就可以了。宏观经济学请个世界级大师,微观经济学请一个大师,计量经济学、金融学再各请一个大师。只要有这四位大师级人物,许多亚洲青年学生就会到中国留学了,而不会选择去英国和欧洲了。这样一来,我们两个和林毅夫都只能当服务员了!张维迎说,恒甫你怎么一干事便让我们趴在地上呀? 我回答:我们不趴在地上,北京大学怎么办成世界一流啊! (掌声雷动) 我认为这是可行的,也是能做到的。战国时代、魏晋南北朝,我们出了那么多有名的思想家、科学家。(掌声雷动)今天,我们应该建立起类似的研究机构,办几所名符其实的高等研究院。我们也有这个财力,养得起一批士大夫。 (掌声雷动) 　　那么,如何创办世界一流大学和研究机构呢? 我们从普林斯顿这个小城镇当初如何办起高等研究院 IAS 得到一些启示。1933年,班伯格兄妹捐了500万美元,办起了日后对世界具有重大影响的普林斯顿高等研究院。刚开张时,该院只请了五个人。他们是爱因斯坦,冯·诺依曼,接着是戈德尔,后来是数学家亚历山大,再后来是数学家沃尔布伦。结果,靠这5人普林斯顿的IAS名声大噪。 (掌声雷动) 　　对于普林斯顿高等研究院,大家并不陌生,也是中国人引以为骄傲的。中国二十世纪，几乎每一位世界级的数学和理论物理的科学大师都与普林斯顿小城里的高等研究院有着密切的关系 当年,院里要把陈省身先生留下来,让他当数学联刊主编;华罗庚先生成名于普林斯顿小城里的IAS;杨振宁先生、李政道先生也在那里获得了诺贝尔物理学奖;丘老师成桐先生在那里得了菲尔兹奖…… (掌声雷动) 　　长期以来,普林斯顿高等研究院做的,是无用知识的有用性。只有无用知识,才是最终最有用的。科学巨匠牛顿、爱因斯坦,他们的科学研究对后来的科学发展影响巨大。从某种意义上说,今天我们需要更多踏踏实实坐冷板凳、扎扎实实搞学问的人。(掌声雷动) http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2005-04/25/content_221381.htm

恒甫六月份问Charles(朝阳)：

你们SOHU神经有毛病,怎么能把他的伟大的中文名字给删了--- SHING-TUNG YAU(***)(恒甫按:即丘先生成桐). 他和陈省生, 李正道和杨政宁一样是这IAS里伟大的人物啊. 而华罗庚也是在这里出名的呀! 我们中国二十世纪的数学和物理的最伟大成就都是与这一最伟大的IAS有关. Charles, 你要对历史负责任啊. 祝一切都好!

最后, 不要让中国的小股民玩股票, 要积德. 你们/我们有钱的中国后裔, 更应向我的世界银行的前任行长Wolfensohn学习, 献钱给IAS修小楼,修大图书馆. 你们到IAS 去看一下: Wolfensohn楼, Simonyi楼, 纽约市长Bloomberg 楼... 我在武汉的IAS就没有一间楼啊!

Best wishes to you and Sohu’s business from Heng-fu in DC

附IAS历史上的部分教授名单: (看清楚啊, 这才叫星汉灿烂!)

W. ALEXANDER;MICHAEL F. ATIYAH;ARMAND BOREL; CHERN, S.S.(陈省生);MARSHALL CLAGETT; ALBERT EINSTEIN ;CLIFFORD GEERTZ;FELIX GILBERT;JAMES F. GILLIAM; KURT GODEL; HETTY GOLDMAN; HARISH-CHANDRA; ERNST H. KANTOROWICZ; GEORGE F. KENNAN ; T. D. LEE(李正道); ELIAS A. LOWEJACK F. MATLOCK, Jr.;MILLARD MEISS; BENJAMIN D. MERITT; JOHN W. ; MARSTON MORSE; J. ROBERT OPPENHEIMER; ABRAHAM PAIS; ERWIN PANOFSKY; TULLIO E. REGGE; CARL L. SIEGEL; KIRK VARNEDOE; OSWALD VEBLEN; JOHN von NEUMANN ; ROBERT B. WARREN; ANDRE WEIL; HERMANN WEYL; HASSLER WHITNEY; FRANK WILCZEK; C. N. YANG(杨政宁); SHING-TUNG YAU(丘先生成桐)

THE USEFULNESS OF USELESS KNOWLEDGE

by Abraham Flexner

邹老师把IAS的创始人的那篇有名的文章和照片贴出来!!!
我记得原来武大的IAS网页上有,我也下载过,但搞丢了!名字好像是无用知识的有用性?
我不记得了,但还想念念.
谢谢您!
一鞠躬!
再鞠躬!

现在你可以看了.多看几遍.请你的朋友们都看看:

The cornerstone of Fuld Hall, the Institute for Advanced Study's first building, was laid on May 22, 1939, the day this photograph was taken. During the nine years following its founding in 1930, Institute Faculty and Members worked in temporary quarters. "I said nothing for several years as to building and site," wrote founding Director Abraham Flexner, describing the Institute's first few years in his autobiography, "and that because, despite their crucial importance, these things come second." The endowment fund that led to the founding of the Institute was given by Louis Bamberger and his sister, Caroline Bamberger Fuld. The new building was named in honor of her husband, Feliz Fuld. Jens Frederick Larson, of Hanover, N.H., was the architect; the New York-based Hegeman-Harris Company, the firm which completed a large part of Rockefeller Center, began construction in October 1938. Left to right: Lavinia Bamberger, Albert Einstein, Anne Crawford Flexner (Mrs. Abraham Flexner), Abraham Flexner, J.R. Hardin, and Herbert Maass.

Over the years there has been a great deal of interest in the education reform ideas of Abraham Flexner (1866-1959), the founding Director (1930-39) of the Institute for Advanced Study. Flexner, who became a very influential figure in education reform, put his progressive ideas about education into practice at an early age. In the fall of 1890 he founded, and for the next fifteen years directed, “Mr. Flexner’s School? in Louisville. This highly successful college preparatory school, which attracted the attention of John Dewey and Charles Eliot, served as Flexner’s laboratory for his theories of education: it had no formal curriculum, no formal grades, no system of examinations, and kept no student achievement records.

Below we offer excerpts from a memo Flexner prepared in 1921 for the General Education Board, an educational foundation founded in 1902 by John D. Rockefeller. Flexner, who was associated with the General Education Board for more than twenty years, later developed this memo into an address entitled “The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge, which was published in Harper’s magazine in October 1939.

THE USEFULNESS OF USELESS KNOWLEDGE

by Abraham Flexner

Is it not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women—old and young—detach themselves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation of beauty, to the extension of knowledge, to the cure of disease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering? The world has always been a sorry and confused sort of place—yet poets and artists and scientists have ignored the factors that would, if attended to, paralyze them. From a practical point of view, intellectual and spiritual life is, on the surface, a useless form of activity, in which men indulge because they procure for themselves greater satisfactions than are otherwise obtainable. In this paper I shall concern myself with the question of the extent to which the pursuit of these useless satisfactions proves unexpectedly the source from which undreamed-of utility is derived…

…We may look at this question from two points of view: the scientific and the humanistic or spiritual. Let us take the scientific first. I recall a conversation which I had some years ago with Mr. George Eastman on the subject of use. Mr. Eastman, a wise and gentle farseeing man, gifted with taste in music and art, had been saying to me that he meant to devote his vast fortune to the promotion of education in useful subjects. I ventured to ask him whom he regarded as the most useful worker in science in the world. He replied instantaneously: “Marconi.? I surprised him by saying, “Whatever pleasure we derive from the radio or however wireless and the radio may have added to human life, Marconi’s share was practically negligible.?

I shall not forget his astonishment on this occasion. He asked me to explain. I replied to him somewhat as follows:

“Mr. Eastman, Marconi was inevitable. The real credit for everything that has been done in the field of wireless belongs, as far as such fundamental credit can be definitely assigned to anyone, to Professor Clerk Maxwell, who in 1865 carried out certain abstruse and remote calculations in the field of magnetism and electricity. Maxwell reproduced his abstract equations in a treatise published in 1873. At the next meeting of the British Association Professor H. J. S. Smith of Oxford declared that ‘no mathematician can turn over the pages of these volumes without realizing that they contain a theory which has already added largely to the methods and resources of pure mathematics.’ Other discoveries supplemented Maxwell’s theoretical work during the next fifteen years. Finally in 1887 and 1888 the scientific problem still remaining—the detection and demonstration of the electromagnetic waves which are the carriers of wireless signals—was solved by Heinrich Hertz, a worker in Helmholtz’s laboratory in Berlin. Neither Maxwell nor Hertz had any concern about the utility of their work; no such thought ever entered their minds. They had no practical objective. The inventor in the legal sense was of course Marconi, but what did Marconi invent? Merely the last technical detail, mainly the now obsolete receiving device called coherer, almost universally discarded.?

Hertz and Maxwell could invent nothing, but it was their useless theoretical work which was seized upon by a clever technician and which has created new means for communication, utility, and amusement by which men whose merits are relatively slight have obtained fame and earned millions. Who were the useful men? Not Marconi, but Clerk Maxwell and Heinrich Hertz. Hertz and Maxwell were geniuses without thought of use. Marconi was a clever inventor with no thought but use.

The mention of Hertz’s name recalled to Mr. Eastman the Hertzian waves, and I suggested that he might ask the physicists of the University of Rochester precisely what Hertz and Maxwell had done; but one thing I said he could be sure of, namely, that they had done their work without thought of use and that throughout the whole history of science most of the really great discoveries which had ultimately proved to be beneficial to mankind had been made by men and women who were driven not by the desire to be useful but merely the desire to satisfy their curiosity.

“Curiosity?? asked Mr. Eastman.

“Yes,? I replied, “curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking. It is not new. It goes back to Galileo, Bacon, and to Sir Isaac Newton, and it must be absolutely unhampered. Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity and the less they are deflected by considerations of immediacy of application, the more likely they are to contribute not only to human welfare but to the equally important satisfaction of intellectual interest which may indeed be said to have become the ruling passion of intellectual life in modern times.?

II

What is true of Heinrich Hertz working quietly and unnoticed in a corner of Helmholtz’s laboratory in the later years of the nineteenth century may be said of scientists and mathematicians the world over for several centuries past. We live in a world that would be helpless without electricity. Called upon to mention a discovery of the most immediate and far-reaching practical use we might well agree upon electricity. But who made the fundamental discoveries out of which the entire electrical development of more than one hundred years has come?

The answer is interesting. Michael Faraday’s father was a blacksmith; Michael himself was apprenticed to a bookbinder. In 1812, when he was already twenty-one years of age, a friend took him to the Royal Institution where he heard Sir Humphrey Davy deliver four lectures on chemical subjects. He kept notes and sent a copy of them to Davy. The very next year, 1813, he became an assistant in Davy’s laboratory, working on chemical problems. Two years later he accompanied Davy on a trip to the Continent. In 1825, when he was thirty-four years of age, he became Director of the Laboratory of the Royal Institution where he spent fifty-four years of his life.

Faraday’s interest soon shifted from chemistry to electricity and magnetism, to which he devoted the rest of his active life. Important but puzzling work in this field had been previously accomplished by Oersted, Amp²re, and Wollaston. Faraday cleared away the difficulties which they had left unsolved and by 1841 had succeeded in the task of induction of the electric current. Four years later a second and equally brilliant epoch in his career opened when he discovered the effect of magnetism on polarized light. His earlier discoveries have led to the infinite number of practical applications by means of which electricity has lightened the burdens and increased the opportunities of modern life. His later discoveries have thus far been less prolific of practical results. What difference did this make to Faraday? Not the least. At no period of his unmatched career was he interested in utility. He was absorbed in disentangling the riddles of the universe, at first chemical riddles, in later periods, physical riddles. As far as he cared, the question of utility was never raised. Any suspicion of utility would have restricted his restless curiosity. In the end, utility resulted, but it was never a criterion to which his ceaseless experimentation could be subjected…

…In the domain of higher mathematics almost innumerable instances can be cited. For example, the most abstruse mathematical work of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the “Non-Euclidian Geometry.? Its inventor, Gauss, though recognized by his contemporaries as a distinguished mathematician, did not dare to publish his work on “Non-Euclidian Geometry? for a quarter of a century. As a matter of fact, the theory of relativity itself with all its infinite practical bearings would have been utterly impossible without the work which Gauss did at Gùttingen.

Again, what is known now as “group theory? was an abstract and inapplicable mathematical theory. It was developed by men who were curious and whose curiosity and puttering led them into strange paths; but “group theory? is today the basis of the quantum theory of spectroscopy, which is in daily use by people who have no idea as to how it came about.

The whole calculus of probability was discovered by mathematicians whose real interest was the rationalization of gambling. It has failed of the practical purpose at which they aimed, but it has furnished a scientific basis for all types of insurance, and vast stretches of nineteenth century physics are based upon it…

III

…I am not for a moment suggesting that everything that goes on in laboratories will ultimately turn to some unexpected practical use or that an ultimate practical use is its actual justification. Much more am I pleading for the abolition of the word “use,? and for the freeing of the human spirit. To be sure, we shall thus free some harmless cranks. To be sure, we shall thus waste some precious dollars. But what is infinitely more important is that we shall be striking the shackles off the human mind and setting it free for the adventures which in our own day have, on the one hand, taken Hale and Rutherford and Einstein and their peers millions upon millions of miles into the uttermost realms of space and, on the other, loosed the boundless energy imprisoned in the atom. What Rutherford and others like Bohr and Millikan have done out of sheer curiosity in the effort to understand the construction of the atom had released forces which may transform human life; but this ultimate and unforseen and unpredictable practical result is not offered as a justification for Rutherford or Einstein or Millikan or Bohr or any of their peers. Let them alone. No educational administrator can possibly direct the channels in which these or other men shall work. The waste, I admit again, looks prodigious. It is not really so. All the waste that could be summed up in developing the science of bacteriology is as nothing compared to the advantages which have accrued from the discoveries of Pasteur, Koch, Ehrlich, Theobald Smith, and scores of others—advantages that could never have accrued if the idea of possible use had permeated their minds. These great artists—for such are scientists and bacteriologists—disseminated the spirit which prevailed in laboratories in which they were simply following the line of their own natural curiosity.

I am not criticizing institutions like schools of engineering or law in which the usefulness motive necessarily predominates. Not infrequently the tables are turned, and practical difficulties encountered in industry or in laboratories stimulate theoretical inquiries which may or may not solve the problems by which they were suggested, but may also open up new vistas, useless at the moment, but pregnant with future achievements, practical and theoretical.

With the rapid accumulation of “useless? or theoretic knowledge a situation has been created in which it has become increasingly possible to attack practical problems in a scientific spirit. Not only inventors, but “pure? scientists have indulged in this sport. I have mentioned Marconi, an inventor, who, while a benefactor to the human race, as a matter of fact merely “picked other men’s brains.? Edison belongs to the same category. Pasteur was different. He was a great scientist; but he was not averse to attacking practical problems—such as the condition of French grapevines or the problems of beer-brewing—and not only solving the immediate difficulty, but also wresting from the practical problem some far-reaching theoretic conclusion, “useless? at the moment, but likely in some unforeseen manner to be “useful? later. Ehrlich, fundamentally speculative in his curiosity, turned fiercely upon the problem of syphilis and doggedly pursued it until a solution of immediate practical use—the discovery of salvarsan—was found. The discoveries of insulin by Banting for use in diabetes and of liver extract by Minot and Whipple for use in pernicious anemia belong in the same category: both were made by thoroughly scientific men, who realized that much “useless? knowledge had been piled up by men unconcerned with its practical bearings, but that the time was now ripe to raise practical questions in a scientific manner.

Thus it becomes obvious that one must be wary in attributing scientific discovery wholly to any one person. Almost every discovery has a long and precarious history. Someone finds a bit here, another a bit there. A third step succeeds later and thus onward till a genius pieces the bits together and makes the decisive contribution. Science, like the Mississippi, begins in a tiny rivulet in the distant forest. Gradually other streams swell its volume. And the roaring river that bursts the dikes is formed from countless sources…

…The considerations upon which I have touched emphasize—if emphasis were needed—the overwhelming importance of spiritual and intellectual freedom. I have spoken of experimental science; I have spoken of mathematics; but what I say is equally true of music and art and of every other expression of the untrammeled human spirit. The mere fact that they bring satisfaction to an individual soul bent upon its own purification and elevation is all the justification that they need. And in justifying these without any reference whatsoever, implied or actual, to usefulness we justify colleges, universities, and institutes of research. An institution which sets free successive generations of human souls is amply justified whether or not this graduate or that makes a so-called useful contribution to human knowledge. A poem, a symphony, a painting, a mathematical truth, a new scientific fact, all bear in themselves all the justification that universities, colleges, and institutes of research need or require…

…We make ourselves no promises, but we cherish the hope that the unobstructed pursuit of useless knowledge will prove to have consequences in the future as in the past. Not for a moment, however, do we defend the Institute on that ground. It exists as a paradise for scholars who, like poets and musicians, have won the right to do as they please and who accomplish most when enabled to do so.