Bridging Divides: The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois

2. October 5, 1985: The Institute Is Born

................. The Institute Is Born . . . . . 13 2 OCTOBER 5, 1985: THE INSTITUTE IS BORN T he Beckman gift was announced on Saturday, October 5, 1985, during the fall meeting of the University of Illinois Foundation. The announcement was made at a meeting in the auditorium of the College of Law. Stan Ikenberry began with a general announcement of the $40 million gift.He was followed by Governor James Thompson,who announced his intent to recommend to the state legislature a special $10 million appropriation in the fall legislative session specifically directed toward costs associated with the construction of the new institute.The groundwork for this commitment had been laid by Stan Ikenberry in several calls to legislative leaders.The governor also reiterated the state’s commitment to funding the continuing operating costs associated with the new institute and to supplying funds in support of programs. 14 . . . . . Bridging Divides Others who spoke at the announcement event were Tom Everhart, Mort Weir,Karl,Bill,I,and of course Arnold Beckman himself (figure 2). The local paper,the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, had a big feature on the news in the Sunday morning paper on October 6. There were questions about what was going to go on in this very large new institute, how it was going to relate to the rest of the university,and where it would be located.It was my task at the announcement event to explain the proposed organizational structure of the institute. To do that I displayed a viewgraph of the “intelligence diagram”shown in figure 1. In part I said We conceive of the institute as consisting of two centers: one for materials science, computers, and computations and another for biology, behavior, and cognition.Each center is organized in terms of the research programs within it in a hierarchical manner, extending from research at the atomic and molecular level through systems of increasing complexity. The idea is that there is a real relationship, a real basis for productive interaction between research programs which extend from artificial systems invented by man to natural systems found in the biological world. At the level of greatest complexity,the emphasis is on the nature of intelligence,whether Figure 2. Arnold Beckman, Governor James Thompson, and Nina Shepherd, president of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, at the October 6, 1985, announcement of the Beckman gift. (The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, October 6, 1985, page A1). Photo courtesy of John Foreman. The Institute Is Born . . . . . 15 human or machine intelligence.With such an organizational structure,we can keep our eye on major questions which are now so complex we cannot hope to answer them: What is the nature of the human brain? How can we design a computer that is more human in its mode of operation, or closely interactive with its human creator? In the more immediate future, the institute is organized to address broad, important interdisciplinary questions across a wide range of sciences. This general description of the institute’s aims and character became a general response to the many questions we received from the press and other sources.“Intelligence”became a kind of logo for the Beckman Institute. In the weeks leading up to the October 5 announcement, considerable thought went into how we might move forward with the Beckman Institute project. We faced many substantial challenges. Although we had general ideas of what the institute was to be like,we had no detailed plans for the construction or other details of what would be a very large facility.During discussions in Troika we determined that we would need to appoint several committees. Accordingly, I drafted letters that went out from Tom Everhart’s office, dated October 8, 1985, appointing a steering committee, which I was to chair, with Ned Goldwasser, Karl Hess,Bill Greenough,Bill Prokasy,and Mac Van Valkenburg,then dean of engineering, as members. Tom appointed two program committees, one with Karl Hess as chair for the Materials Science, Computers, and Computation Center, and the other with Bill Greenough as chair for the Biology, Behavior, and Cognition Center. The chancellor also appointed an administrative committee under the chairmanship of Ned Goldwasser to consider an appropriate administrative structure for the institute and its administrative relationships to other campus units.The appointment letters for these committees are shown in appendix 2.The letters reflected the complexity of the challenges that lay ahead.We had yet...