Abraham Flexner

Abraham Flexner (November 13, 1866 – September 21, 1959) was an American educator. His Flexner Report, published in 1910, reformed medical education in the United States. He also helped found the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Abraham Flexner, c. 1895.

Early life and education

Flexner was born in Louisville, Kentucky. A younger brother of the medical researcher Simon Flexner, who was employed by the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research from 1901–1935, Abraham graduated from Johns Hopkins University at age 19. Nineteen years later, he did graduate studies at Harvard University and at the University of Berlin. He did not, however, complete work on an advanced degree at either institution.

Experimental schooling

After graduating from Johns Hopkins, Flexner returned to Louisville and founded a private school, in which to test his ideas about education. He believed that education should offer small classes, personal attention, and hands-on teaching. Graduates of his school were soon accepted at leading colleges, and his teachings attracted considerable attention.

Between 1912 to 1925, Flexner served on the Rockefeller Foundation's General Education Board, and after 1917 was its secretary. With the help of the Board, he founded another experimental school, the Lincoln School, which opened in 1917, in cooperation with the faculty at Teachers College of Columbia University.

The American College

In 1908, Flexner published his first book, The American College. Strongly critical of many aspects of American higher education, it denounced, in particular, the university lecture as a method of instruction. According to Flexner, lectures enabled colleges to "handle cheaply by wholesale a large body of students that would be otherwise unmanageable and thus give the lecturer time for research."

His book attracted the attention of Henry Pritchett, president of the Carnegie Foundation, who was looking for someone to lead a series of studies of professional education. Although Flexner had never set foot inside a medical school, he was Pritchett's first choice to lead a study of American medical education, and soon joined the research staff at the Carnegie Foundation in 1908.

Flexner Report

Two years later, he published the Flexner Report, which examined the state of American medical education and led to far-reaching reform in the training of doctors. The Flexner report led to the closure of most rural medical schools and all but two African-American medical colleges in the United States. Ironically, one of the schools was located in his home town, Louisville National Medical College. In response to the report, some schools fired senior faculty members in a process of reform and renewal.

Flexner soon conducted a related study of medical education in Europe. According to Bonner (2002), Flexner's work came to be "nearly as well known in Europe as in America." With funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, Flexner "...exerted a decisive influence on the course of medical training and left an enduring mark on some of the nation's most renowned schools of medicine." He worried that "the imposition of rigid standards by accrediting groups was making the medical curriculum a monstrosity," with medical students moving through it with "little time to stop, read, work or think." Bonner (2002) calls Flexner "the severest critic and the best friend American medicine ever had."

Universities: American, English, German

In his 1930 Universities: American, English, German, Flexner returned to his earlier interest in the direction and purpose of the American university, attacking distractions from serious learning, such as intercollegiate athletics, student government, and other student activities. "Intellectual inquiry, not job training, [is] the purpose of the university."

Institute for Advanced Study

With Louis Bamberger, Flexner founded the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, heading it from 1930 to 1939 and overseeing a faculty that included Kurt Gödel and John von Neumann. During his time there, Flexner helped bring over many European scientists who would likely have suffered persecution by the rising Nazi government. He even penned the letter inviting Albert Einstein to the United States and the Institute.^{[citation needed]}

Death

Flexner is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.

Legacy

The Flexner family legacy in American science and academia lives on. In addition to contributions by his brother Simon, their nephew, Louis Barkhouse Flexner (January 7, 1902 - March 29, 1996), was founding director of the Mahoney Institute of Neurological Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and a former editor of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Billionaire Warren Buffett said in a 2012 interview with The Economist that a book he read by Flexner had "huge impact" on him as a teenager.

Honors

• Abraham Flexner Way in downtown Louisville's hospital district was named by the Louisville Board of Aldermen in November 1978 to honor Flexner.

Books by Flexner

• 1910. Medical Education in the United States and Canada.
• 1910. Medical Education in the United States and Canada (at Google Books).
• 1912. Medical education in Europe; a report to the Carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching.
• 1916. A Modern School.
• 1918 (with F.B. Bachman). The Gary Schools.
• 1927 "Do Americans Really Value Education?" The Inglis Lecture 1927(Harvard University Press)
• 1928. The Burden of Humanism. The Taylorian Lecture at Oxford University.
• 1930. Universities: American, English, German.
• 1940. I Remember: The Autobiography of Abraham Flexner. Simon and Schuster. Fulltext on Questia.
• 1943. A biography of H.S. Pritchett.

Books about Flexner

• Bonner, Thomas Neville, 2002. Iconoclast: Abraham Flexner and a Life in Learning. Johns Hopkins Univ. Press. ISBN 0-8018-7124-7.
• Nevins, Michael, 2010. Abraham Flexner: A Flawed American Icon. iUniverse. ISBN 978-1-4502-6086-2.
• Starr, Paul, 1982. The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-07935-0.
• Wheatley, S. C., 1989. The Politics of Philanthropy: Abraham Flexner and Medical Education. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-11754-5.

External links

• Jacob This site offers biographical information about Abraham
• Amy E. Wells: "Flexner, Abraham (1866–1959)." In: Encyclopedia of Education. 2002.