The whole birth of the Flatiron Institute is another whole story. I just remember the retreat we had; it was somewhere on the Hudson River about seven years ago. When Jim and Marilyn invited maybe 10 or 12 very prominent people from different areas of science to come and make the case for new directions here at the Simons Foundation. I had invited Bill Newsom, who made the case for integrated neuroscience. Which Jim, on a plane in flight, renamed Global Brain. But there were great presentations made by mathematicians and physicists, and that gave birth to a series of discussions, meetings, workshops, which led to the Flatiron Institute and all the programs you see in here. I just saw Leslie Greengard walk by, he was a big part of that too, and David Spergel was a big part of that in astrophysics.
I meant to tell you, when I began, when I was recruited by Jim and I joined the foundation down on 17th Street, there were seven people, seven faculty and administrators together. Now there are 450, so it's very different than it was. It's hard to imagine it growing at that rate. I've never heard of anyone who's disappointed in working at the foundation, not yet. So, we'll see how it goes from here.
A few years ago, I gave a talk at Rockefeller and said I believe that the Simons Foundation was analogous to the Howard Hughes Institute. That in its scope, in its focus, it had a different focus, but it remained focused on basic science, just as Howard Hughes had. And Mike Brown and Joe [Goldstein], two Hughes investigators, agreed with me. I know that the grants we gave changed the field of autism. We picked some of the very best scientists in the world. We didn't just focus on who had been working on autism, as long as they expressed an interest in learning about the biology of the genetics or the clinical aspects and as long as they were distinguished scientists and passed review, they got a grant. Those same people told me that our annual meetings were the best meetings they've ever gone to. I felt greatly satisfied by that.
