What was the Krasnow Institute?

Via, the Wayback Machine, here’s the homepage from circa 2008. Often called, SFI East, the Institute was a product of private east coast money and west coast intellect. Its founders included the likes of Murray Gell-Mann. For a while, it was also a small-ish academic unit of George Mason University offering degrees in computational social science and neuroscience. It’s first Director, Harold Morowitz, was a pioneer in biophysics at Yale University who later became a Robinson Professor of Natural Philosophy at Mason.

The Institute is no more, it was killed off while I was in government, by the short-sightedness of former leadership of the University who are now long gone. But the gorgeous building is still there along with its art and glass-cubed great room surrounded by forest. It’s worth seeing if you are in the neighborhood.

If you look closely at the homepage, you’ll notice a bullet for the “Decade of the Mind” back in 2007. That Decade of the Mind became something called The BRAIN Initiative. Good ideas have a way of living beyond the lifetimes of their inventors.