Manjari Narayan

What do you mean by administrative? Do you mean someone like Bode at Bell labs?

Hamming: I went to my boss, Bode, one day and said, "Why did you ever become department head? Why didn't you just be a good scientist?''

He said, "Hamming, I had a vision of what mathematics should be in Bell Laboratories. And I saw if that vision was going to be realized, I had to make it happen; I had to be department head.''

Well let me think out loud a bit… with the caveat that I have zero relevant knowledge (BTW I’ve read the Haming book but don’t remember that exchange or who Bode was)

Let’s say you have something around $10^8 you want to spend on nontraditional basic research (nontraditional because you understand there’s too much funding for run-of-the-mill science already).

And you aren’t going to be hiring individual scientists because you don't have the expertise and also you want to spend your time sailing or whatever. Instead you want to create an institution that will do that work for you, that you control but don't have to manage.

The anti-model and default option here is a "center of excellence." You pick an attractive-sounding, socially approved field and put up a building and fill it with the most credentialed people you can lure away from academic departments in that field.