The Fields Institute Turns Twenty-Five 170725 Final book with covers | Page 38

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Carl Riehm
who was enthusiastic about his proposal. I became the first
Chairman of the Board, presumably because I was the oldest
of the three of us, but my tenure in that position did not
last for very long. Doug Wright suggested Peter Nicholson for
that role. None of us had heard of Peter before, but he had
a PhD in Mathematics (from Stanford) and he was known to
be politically savvy. A perfect choice! In the meantime we
also recruited Louis Nirenberg (Courant Institute, NYU) and
David Mumford (Harvard) as members of the Board.
During this period, there were several planning meetings.
At one such meeting at our house, various names for the
proposed new institute were discussed. Should it be called
the Southern Ontario Institute for Mathematics? The Ontario
Mathematics Institute? My wife, Elaine McKinnon Riehm,
jumped up and suggested that the institute be named for John
Charles Fields, who had been born in Hamilton, taught for
over three decades at the University of Toronto, and moreover
was known throughout the mathematical world for having
established the Fields Medal.
So the nascent Fields Institute was off to a flying start!