Chapter 47 Chapter 9 Riding on Victory and Moving Forward

Just after Christmas in 1989, Brian Arthur drove west from Santa Fe to his home at Stanford University, loaded with books and clothes.He gazed at the glorious New Mexico sunset, bathed in a golden light of the desert. "I thought, this is too romantic to be realistic," he laughs. But it's really immersive.He said: "I have been at Santa Fe Institute for eighteen months. I feel that I need to go home, I need to go back to write, to think, to clear everything in my head. My head is full of various ideas. I think I have learned more in one month at Santa Fe than I have learned in one year at Stanford. The one and a half years experience is simply too rich. But to Leaving Santa Fe was still sad. I was very, very sad. It was nostalgia, to put it mildly. Everything I saw, the desert, the sun, the sunset, made me realize that in the The eighteen months I spent here were the high point of my scientific career. But it's over now, and it won't be repeated easily. I know there will be others who will come to Santa Fe and continue our careers. I know I might as well. Will come again, maybe even at some point in the future to run an economics program. But I doubt that the Santa Fe Institute will be the same by then. I feel that I am in the heyday of Santa Fe. It's a great honor."