author
Abraham Flexner
1866–1959
Best known for the 1910 report that transformed medical education, this influential educator also helped shape modern higher learning in the United States. Later, he went on to found the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a home for pure research and big ideas.
1 Audiobook
Prostitution in Europe
by Abraham Flexner
About the author
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1866, Abraham Flexner began his career in education rather than medicine. After studying at Johns Hopkins, he ran a progressive private school in Louisville and developed strong views about how students learn best.
He became famous for surveying medical schools in the United States and Canada for the Carnegie Foundation. The 1910 study that came to be known as the Flexner Report exposed weak standards and pushed medical education toward stronger scientific training, university affiliation, and better clinical instruction.
Flexner continued to influence American education through his work with major foundations, and in 1930 he became the founding director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. There he helped create a place devoted to scholarship for its own sake, attracting leading thinkers and leaving a lasting mark on intellectual life before his death in 1959.