FLEXNER

FLEXNER , U.S. family. simon flexner (1863–1946), U.S. physician and medical scientist, was born in Louisville, Ken., son of Morris Flexner, a Bohemian immigrant. He was the author of more than 350 scientific papers and monographs and joint author with his son, James Thomas Flexner, of the biography William Henry Welch and the Heroic Age of American Medicine (1941).

bernard flexner (1865–1945) U.S. lawyer and Zionist leader, was born in Louisville, Ken., brother of Simon. After receiving a law degree from the University of Louisville (1898) and doing postgraduate work at the University of Virginia, he practiced law in Kentucky, later moving to Chicago (1911) and then to New York (1919). Throughout his career Flexner was much concerned with social welfare and labor problems. He was chairman of the Juvenile Court Board in Louisville and helped establish the first juvenile court in Chicago. Active in the National Probation Association, he served as president (1912–13) and as a committee member until his death. As a member of an American Red Cross mission to Romania in 1917, Flexner became convinced that Zionism was the solution to the problems of European Jewry. He entered actively into the U.S. Zionist movement and was counsel to the Zionist delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. When the *Palestine Economic Corporation was organized in 1925, Flexner became its first president, later serving as chairman of the board until 1944. He was also associated with many institutions, banks, and companies fostering the growth of the Jewish economy in Palestine. Among his other activities were membership on the executive committees of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Palestine. Flexner was joint author of Juvenile Courts and Probation (1914) and Legal Aspects of the Juvenile Court (1922).

abraham *flexner, U.S. educator, was a brother of Simon and Bernard. washington flexner (1896–1942), U.S. printer, was born in Louisville, Ken., brother of Simon, Bernard, and Abraham. In 1915 Washington Flexner organized the Lincoln Printing Company in Chicago, which became the largest financial printing company in the United States. jennie maas flexner (1882–1944), U.S. librarian, was born in Louisville, Ken., daughter of Jacob Flexner. One of the pioneers of modern American librarianship, Jennie Flexner served as reader's adviser at the New York Public Library, and was author of Circulation Work in Public Libraries (1927) and Making Books Work, a Guide to the Use of Libraries (1943). james thomas flexner (1908–2003), U.S. author, son of Simon Flexner. James Thomas Flexner was the author of approximately 30 popular works on American art and civilization, including: Doctors on Horseback: Pioneers of American Medicine (1937), America's Old Masters (1939), Short History of American Painting (1950), and American Painting: The Light of the Distant Skies (1954). He also wrote a highly acclaimed four-volume biography of George Washington. (1965–72). His autobiography, Maverick's Progress, appeared in 1996.

bibliography:

simon flexner:New York Times (May 3,1946); S.R. Kagan, Jewish Contributions to Medicine in America (1934), 294–7; Rous, in: Science, 107 (1948), 611–3; idem, in: Royal Society of London, Obituary Notices of Fellows, 18 (1949), 409–45. bernard flexner:New York Times (May 4 and 7, 1945); National Cyclopediaof American Biography, 34 (1948), 517–8; james thomas flexner:Who's Who in America (1968–69), 746. washington flexner:National Cyclopedia of American Biography, 34 (1948), 265–66. jennie maas flexner:New York Times (Nov. 18, 1944).

[Morton Rosenstock]