education enterprise would go so far beyond that either Pritchett or the AMA Council could have imagined. He did a prodigious job in familiarizing himself with the literature on medical education and impressed … with his probing intellect and quick grasp of what needed to be done. Here was no pliant, hired hand going what he was told but a fiercely independent man who had informed himself so well that from then on, it was Flexner … who became almost overnight the most sought-after authority on matters affecting medical schools.