Scope and Content Note
The papers of Abraham Flexner (1866-1959) span the years 1865-1989 with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1900-1959. The collection is organized into the following series: Correspondence, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Miscellany, and Addition.
The Correspondence File includes family and general correspondence. Family correspondence consists primarily of Flexner's letters to his wife, playwright Anne Crawford Flexner, and their daughters Jean Atherton Flexner and Eleanor Flexner. General correspondence includes letters exchanged with a wide range of correspondents reflecting Flexner's activities in educational reform and his work with foundations to expand research and educational opportunities. Significant and frequent correspondents include Louis Bamberger, John D. Barrett, E. Michael Bluestone, Welles Bosworth, W. R. Boyd, Wallace Buttrick, Huntington Cairns, Evans Clark, Richard Courant, Thomas S. Cullen, Harold W. Dodds, Albert Einstein, Bernard Flexner, Raymond Blaine Fosdick, Robert J. Getty, Jean Gottmann, Paul H. Hanus, Caryl Parker Haskins, James Hazen Hyde, William S. Learned, Herbert H. Lehman, Charles A. Lindbergh, E. A. Lowe, Paul Mantoux, Violet R. Markham, Thomas H. McKittrick, Benjamin Dean Meritt, Allan Nevins, John D. Rockefeller (1874-1960), Julius Rosenwald, Dean Rusk, Ellery Sedgwick, William Henry Welch, Hermann Weyl, and Sir E. L. Woodward.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching series contains material pertaining to Flexner's work with the foundation and includes research files for his work, Medical Education in the United States and Canada (1910). Impressed with Flexner's critical writings on higher education, Carnegie Foundation president Henry S. Pritchett hired Flexner in 1908 to study and report on the status of education in the medical profession. Significant for its frank and unflattering appraisal of medical training, the report effected numerous changes in medical schools and established Flexner as an authority in the field. The medical education files include correspondence, reports, and notes relating to the universities and schools Flexner examined. The general correspondence chiefly documents Flexner's continuing relations with the foundation after he had been appointed secretary of the General Education Board, an educational fund created by John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937). The series also includes correspondence of Henry S. Pritchett pertaining to his service as a civilian representative on the Light-House Board of the Department of Commerce and Labor from 1901 to 1910. Flexner published Henry S. Pritchett: A Biography in 1943. Pritchett's papers are also in the Manuscript Division.
The Addition series has extensive family correspondence and includes letters between Flexner and his wife and daughters. The correspondence is mostly personal with occasional discussions of world and national politics, literary publications, cultural events, and research projects. Correspondents include Bernard Flexner, Hortense Flexner, and James Thomas Flexner. A small group of general correspondence primarily from Flexner's retirement years documents his undiminished interest in educational foundations and their activities. Significant and frequent correspondents include the Ford Foundation, Paul Mellon, Lessing J. Rosenwald, and Sir E. L. Woodward. A speeches and writings file contains printed and typescript versions of articles and lectures, a memoir of the Flexner family, and writings about Flexner.