Meet Warren Buffett's Secret Hero

Warren Buffett has made some $50 billion doing things his own way, so it was completely consistent that at The Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy, held at the iconic main branch of the New York Public Library, rather than take a book out of the building, he brought one in. Specifically, a well-worn hardcover copy of I Remember, the 1940 autobiography of a man named Abraham Flexner, founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Study, whom few modern philanthropists have even heard of.

Of an interview with Warren Buffett, Forbes Magazine's Randall Lane writes, "'Abraham Flexner probably influenced philanthropy as much as any individual in the country,' Buffett tells me, flipping through the autobiography he first read more than a half-century ago. 'Not in terms of the money he used but of what he brought to the game.'"