Today is π Day! And one of the many interesting people involved in the many uses of this constant was Eratosthenes, the ancient Greek geographer who calculated the circumference of Earth. Eratosthenes was also the Director at the Library of Alexandria. But how did he end up there? Lionel Casson, in his Libraries in the Ancient World, examines this:

They had to start from scratch. Alexandria was a brand-new city with a population consisting most of soldiers and sailors of the Ptolemies' armed forces, bureaucrats and clerks of their administration, and the mixed bag of traders, businessmen, craftsman [sic], swindlers, and whatnot, who see opportunity in, as it were, a fresh playing field. Intellectuals had to be blandished into coming to a place that to all outward appearances was a cultural wasteland. The Ptolemies offered such irresistible inducements that in the course of the third century B.C., the period of the city's cultural zenith, they were able to gather there a stellar community. From Athens, Ptolemy I got not only Euclid but also Strato, the foremost physicist of the age, and Ptolemy III got Eratosthenes, the geographer whose calculation of the circumference of the earth was astonishingly accurate. Herophilus, pioneer in the study of anatomy, after training at the renowned medical center on Cos where Hippocrates had practiced, set himself up at Alexandria. Even the great Archimedes was coaxed into leaving his native Syracuse for a short stay there.

What helped mightily in enticing intellectuals to the city was the founding by Ptolemy I of the famous Museum. In ancient times, the word museum normally referred to a religious establishment, a temple for the worship of the muses; Ptolemy's creation was a figurative temple for the muses, a place for cultivating the arts they symbolized. It was an ancient version of a think-tank: the members, consisting of noted writers, poets, scientists, and scholars, were appointed by the Ptolemies for life and enjoyed a handsome salary, tax exemption (no inconsiderable perquisite in the Ptolemaic kingdom), free lodging, and food. There was no danger of funds running out since the institution had an endowment granted by Ptolemy I when he set it up. For its quarters he turned over an area in the palace, including a room where the members could dine together. They were, in short, spared the lowly details of daily life in order to spend their time on elevated intellectual pursuits—just like their counterparts in today's think-tanks.

In our modern day, there are many such institutions devoted to providing a home and gathering places for intellectuals, from think tanks to scientific research institutes. And many of them are even handsomely endowed, to allow their residents to avoid such mundane concerns as fund-raising.

But how many of these intellectual institutions were constructed for the purpose of growing their city? Alexandria was a new city and needed an intellectual jump-start, and the Museum and Library provided this. But do individual research institutions grow their greater host city as a whole? Universities can often provide boons to their towns (though there are many college towns that have little positive feedback with their colleges), but what about smaller research institutes or think tanks? Too often, we see intellectual outposts as simply that: outposts separated from their city. If properly constructed, scholarly institutions should play off the larger community, allowing both to become stronger. But this doesn't always happen and the mechanisms for ensuring that this positive feedback occurs need to be more carefully examined. Know of an institution that has succeeded in this regard, or failed spectacularly? Let me know in the comments.

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