Chapter 11 george

george In addition to the character weakness of reticence, Cowan is actually the most suitable person in charge.He has connections all over the place.Of course, it was almost inevitable that he would have so many acquaintances.In New Mexico's sparsely populated state, Los Alamos executives quickly became acquainted with various authorities in the state.But it would be even more beneficial if Los Alamos' executive executive happened to be a millionaire himself. Cowan doesn't usually take the initiative to ask this question.It also seemed awkward when asked. "If anybody told me I was having trouble because of money - well, I just wouldn't agree."

In the early 1960s, he explained, “Los Alamos was implementing the ideal model of a socialist economy: there was no private property here. People were given houses according to their rank and importance. They were given shack-like houses. The houses looked like military barracks." "Back then, I was recruiting - and it was usually men - but it wasn't easy. Letting them live in a shed would have separated them immediately. So we tried to convince But the banks wouldn't lend to the government. So we said to ourselves, 'Okay, then we'll save our own money and look for loans.' I remember telling my wife that maybe our investment would go down the drain. She said: 'It's okay.' But we didn't lose everything. Our savings and loans ended up paying off. So we decided to start a bank, the Los Alamos National Bank. And it went off and on again."

"It just takes the help of a competent lawyer and a few friendly MPs," he said. As early as the summer of 1983, Cowan foresaw the need for seed funding to create the Institute.So he turned to an old friend of his: Arther Spiegel of the Spiegel Catalaogo Consortium.Together, he and Spiegel had raised money for the Santa Fe Opera, and he knew that Spiegel and his wife were also major fundraisers for the New Mexico Symphony.For Spiegel, although he wouldn't quite understand what Cowan was talking about about creating a research institute, Cowan's idea was grandiose to him, because the United States desperately needed to respond to Japan's role in the world. High-tech leadership responds.So he started helping Cowan lobby all kinds of rich people in Santa Fe to invest.There are many rich people in Santa Fe.

By the spring of 1984, Spiegel had raised a little cash from Mountain Bell and one of the best-performing banks (which has since failed).It wasn't a lot of money, but Cowan didn't consider fundraising his most important job at the time.He felt that the more important thing was to lay a foundation.For example, around Easter in 1984, Cowan paid three hundred dollars out of his own pocket to invite the leaders of Santa Fe to lunch. “We felt like politically we needed them to know what we were thinking, to get their interest, to get their support. But we didn’t make a big splash. We didn’t want people to read in the papers that Santa Fe was suddenly coming. The intellectuals of Los Alamos are doing things that the people of Santa Fe don't understand."

This lunch did not bring in any funds.But it's a good chance to practice.Gell-Mann attended the lunch and gave a speech, which was well received by the audience.This is a lecture given by a Nobel Prize winner! At the same time, there is still the question of how to form an entity.If you're going to start asking people for money, you can't just have a personal account, you have to have other accounts that can receive donations.So Cowin and Metropolis turned to their old friend Jack Compbell.Campbell, once the governor of the state, is now the head of a thriving law firm in Santa Fe.Campbell was very enthusiastic about the matter.He said he's always wanted to do something like this when he was governor.New Mexico's universities are largely isolated from the real world.Campbell agreed to have his law firm provide legal advice for the institute, drafting the various legal documents that would constitute the entity.He also instructed Cowan on how to explain to the IRS that the new institute was indeed a nonprofit. (The IRS is notoriously skeptical of such matters. Cowan had to fly to Dallas to make his statement in person.)

In May 1984, the Santa Fe Institute was established.There is no location, no faculty, and no money.In fact, it was nothing more than a post office box and a phone number for Spiegel's office.It didn't even have a proper name: The name "Santa Fere Institute" was already registered for use by a treatment center.So Cowin and his colleagues had to name the institute "The Rio Grande Institute" (The Rio Grande Institute. The Rio Grande River flows a few miles west of Santa Fe).But anyway, the institute already exists. Yet the vexing question of what problems the Institute is devoted to research remains.The vistas that Gell-Mann brilliantly paints are certainly good.Gell-Mann was a brilliant man, but no one would throw millions of dollars into an institute without knowing exactly what it was going to do.They won't invest until they see that the institute is putting research into it. "Herb, how do we go about doing this?" Cowan asked Los Alamos senior researcher Herb Anderson that spring.Anderson said that the method he is most comfortable with is to gather a group of very outstanding people together to form a research group, each talking about the topic in which he is most deeply involved and most interested.You can find out what covers these different subject areas in the presentations of the people you invite, he says.If there is an intersection that encompasses all disciplines, you will always see it emerge from the discussion.

"So I said, 'Okay, here you go.' So he did," Cowan said.Shortly after that, Paines offered to merge the research groups—and he largely thought so—and Anderson happily joined him in the project.