The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 37

CHAPTER 2
An Institute Needs a Name
Carl Riehm
“My wife, Elaine McKinnon Riehm, jumped up and suggested that
the institute be named for John Charles Fields.”
One day I was working in my office at McMaster when
my phone rang. It was Bill Shadwick, whose name was
unfamiliar to me, but he was calling about a familiar
subject. I’d heard about the competition among Ontario
Universities called the Centres of Excellence Program, and
when the results of the first round were announced, I looked
in vain for anything mathematical. Like me, Bill regretted
that no mathematics-related subject had been chosen or
even proposed. And thus began my involvement with the
hypothetical, new, as yet unnamed institute.
Bill did not waste any time. He recruited Steve Halperin
from the University of Toronto and he already had a Director
in mind, Jerry Marsden from Berkeley. He had also talked
to the President of the University of Waterloo—Doug Wright,