The California Institute of Technology (commonly known as Caltech) is a private, coeducational university located in Pasadena, California, in the United States.
A leading research university, Caltech maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering. It operates the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory for NASA.
History
Modern Caltech grew from a vocational school founded in
Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known
successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, and Throop College of Technology, before
acquiring its current name in 1920.
The driving force behind the transformation of Caltech from a school of arts and crafts to a world-class scientific center was the vision of astronomer George Ellery Hale. Hale had joined Throop's board of trustees after
coming to Pasadena in 1907 as the first director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. At a time when scientific
research in the United States was still in its infancy, Hale saw an opportunity to create in Pasadena an institution for serious
research and education in engineering and the natural sciences. Hale succeeded in attracting private gifts of land and money that
allowed him to endow the school with well-equipped, modern laboratory
facilities. He then convinced two of the leading American scientists of the time, physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes and
experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan, to join Caltech's faculty and
contribute to the project of establishing it as a center for science and technology.
Under the leadership of Hale, Noyes, and Millikan (and aided by the booming economy of Southern California), Caltech grew very significantly in prestige in the 1920's. In 1923, Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics. In 1925 the school established a
department of geology and hired William Bennett Munro,
then chairman of the division of History, Government, and Economics at Harvard University, to create a division of humanities
and social sciences at Caltech. In 1928 a division of biology was established under the leadership of
Thomas Hunt Morgan, the most distinguished biologist in the
United States and a discoverer of the chromosome. In 1926 a graduate school of aeronautics was created which
eventually attracted Theodore von Kármán, who later
contributed to the creation of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and who established Caltech as one of the foremost centers for
rocket-science. In 1928 construction began on the
Palomar Observatory.
Millikan served as "chairman of the executive council" (effectively Caltech's president) from 1921 to 1945, and his influence was such that the Institute was occasionally
referred to as "Millikan's School." In the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's, Caltech was known as the home of arguably the two
greatest theoretical particle physicists working at the time:
Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman. Both Gell-Mann and Feynman received Nobel Prizes for their work, which was central to the
establishment of the so-called "Standard Model" of particle physics.
Feynman was also widely known outside the physics community as an exceptional teacher and a colorful, unconventional
character.
Caltech remains, to this day, a relatively small university, with approximately 900 undergraduates, 1,200 graduate students, and
915 faculty members (including professors, permanent research faculty, and
postdoctoral researchers.)
The movie comedy Real Genius was loosely based
on events at Caltech. [1] (http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~erich/real_genius_refs.html)
Student life
Housing system
During the early 20th century, a Caltech committee visited several
universities and decided to transform the undergraduate housing system
from regular fraternities to a House System,
similar to the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge. Four (south) houses (or hovses, so named for the inscription on the gates
thereof) were built: Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House, and Ricketts House. In the late 20th century, three north houses were built: Lloyd House,
Page House, and Ruddock House. During the 1990s, an additional
house, Avery House, was built to accommodate those who feel the original
seven houses were not suitable for them. Some students jocularly refer to the Undergraduate Computer Science Laboratory as
another house, as a few spend most of their time there. The four south houses will be closed for renovation during the 2005–2006 school year.
Traditions
There are many annual traditions at Caltech, demonstrating the weird and
wonderful creativity of its inhabitants. Every Halloween there is a pumpkin drop from the top of the Millikan Library, the highest point on campus, where the
frozen pumpkin supposedly flashes as it hits the ground. And then there is the annual Ditch Day, where seniors ditch school but
design elaborate tasks and traps at the doors of their rooms to prevent underclassmen from entering. This has evolved to the
point where many seniors spend months designing mechanical/electrical/software obstacles in order to confound the underclassmen.
The faculty has been drawn into the event as well, and cancel all classes on Ditch Day so that the underclassmen can participate
in what has become a highlight of the year.
Another tradition was the playing of the Ride of the
Valkyries at 7 AM the morning of finals week with the largest speakers available in the hallway of the freshmen. The
playing of that piece is not allowed at any other time, and any offender is dragged off into the showers to be drenched in cold
water fully dressed. The playing of the Ride is such a strong tradition that the music was used during Apollo 17 to awaken Astronaut Harrison Schmitt, the only astronaut-scientist to explore the moon.
Caltech students have been known for the many pranks (also known as
RF's) they have pulled off in the area. The two most famous are the changing of the Hollywood sign to read Caltech, by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the
Rose Bowl scoreboard to an imaginary game where Caltech
soundly trounced MIT.
Honor Code
Another unique feature of the Caltech community is the Honor Code, which
states simply: "No member of the Caltech community shall take unfair advantage of any other member of the Caltech community."
This is enforced by a Board of Control, consisting of members of the community.[2] (http://donut.caltech.edu/about/boc/ug_handbook.php)
Noted alumni
- Carl D. Anderson, BS 1927, PhD 1930 - Nobel laureate in physics (1936)
- Moshe Arens, MS 1953 - former Israeli defense minister and foreign
minister
- Arnold Beckman, PhD 1928 - Founder of Beckman Instruments and financier of the first "silicon" company in
Silicon Valley, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory.
- Sabeer Bhatia, BS 1991 - Co-founder of Hotmail
- David Brin, BS 1973 - science fiction author
- Frank Capra, BS 1918 - Filmmaker, author of such classics as It's a Wonderful Life
- Chester Carlson, BS 1930 - Inventor of the photocopier, the
foundation of Xerox
- Chung-Yao Chao, PhD 1930 - The first scientist that captured
positron through electron-positron annihilation. Father of atomic energy enterprise of China.
- Fernando J. Corbató, BS 1950 - Computer scientist,
recipient of the 1990 Turing
Award
- William A. Fowler, PhD 1936 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1983)
- Yuan-Cheng Fung, PhD 1948 - Founder of Biomechanics
- Donald A. Glaser, PhD 1950 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1960)
- Juris Hartmanis, PhD 1955 - Computer scientist, recipient of the
1993 Turing Award
- Leland H. Hartwell, BS 1961 - Nobel laureate in physiology
or medicine (2001)
- Steingrímur Hermannsson, MS 1952 - former Prime
Minister of Iceland
- David Ho, BS 1974 - AIDS researcher
- Tsien Hsue-shen, PhD 1939 - Father of China's rocket program
- Donald Knuth, PhD 1963 - Computer scientist, creator of TeX typesetting language, and author of The Art of Computer Programming, recipient of the 1974 Turing Award
- Edward B. Lewis, PhD 1942 - Nobel laureate in physiology or
medicine (1995)
- York Liao, BS 1967 - inventor of
liquid crystal displays
- Alan Lightman, PhD 1974 - physicist and novelist
- William Lipscomb, PhD 1946 - Nobel laureate in chemistry
(1976)
- Paul MacCready, MS 1948,
PhD 1952 - Father of Human Powered Flight, invented the Gossamer
Condor and the Gossamer Albatross
- Benoît Mandelbrot, Eng 1949 - Pioneer of fractal geometry
- John McCarthy, BS 1948 - Computer scientist, inventor of the Lisp programming language and recipient of the 1971 Turing Award
- Edwin Mattison McMillan, BS 1928, MS 1929 - Nobel
laureate in chemistry (1951)
- Robert C. Merton, MS 1967 - Nobel laureate in economics (1997)
- Cleve Moler, BS 1961 - Inventor of MATLAB, co-founder of The MathWorks, influential in the
field of numerical analysis
- Gordon E. Moore, PhD 1954 - co-founder of Intel Corp. and author of Moore's law
- Frank Oppenheimer, PhD 1939 - Manhattan Project physicist, founder of the Exploratorium
- Douglas D. Osheroff, BS 1967 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1996)
- Linus Pauling, PhD 1925 - Nobel laureate in chemistry (1954) and
peace (1962)
- William Luther Pierce, graduate studies - Neo-Nazi activist, founder of the white supremacist National Alliance,
author of The Turner Diaries
- John M. Poindexter, PhD 1964 - Director of DARPA Information Awareness Office, National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan
- Leo James Rainwater, BS 1939 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1975)
- Simon Ramo, PhD 1936 - co-founder of TRW and developed ICBMs
- Benjamin Rosen, BS 1954 -
co-founder of Compaq
- Harrison Schmitt, BS 1957 - astronaut and US Senator, the only
geologist to have ever walked on the moon
- William Shockley, BS 1932 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1956)
- Vernon L. Smith, BS 1949 - Nobel laureate in economics
(2002)
- Robert Tarjan, BS 1969 - Computer scientist, recipient of the
1986 Turing Award
- Howard M. Temin, PhD 1960 - Nobel laureate in physiology or
medicine (1975)
- Charles H. Townes, PhD 1939 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1964)
- Kenneth G. Wilson, PhD 1961 - Nobel laureate in physics
(1982)
- Robert W. Wilson, PhD 1962 - Nobel laureate in
physics (1978)
- Stephen Wolfram, PhD 1979 - Creator of Mathematica
Noted faculty
External links
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