THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA’S

California’s Pasadena is home to the private research institution known as the California Institute of Technology (often known as Caltech or CIT)With over 2400 students enrolled, Caltech is one of the most selective colleges in the world and is regarded as one of the greatest academic institutions in the world. The university is renowned for its strengths in science and engineering and is one of only a handful of American technological institutes that focus primarily on teaching the pure and applied sciences.

Amos G. Throop established the facility as a prep and vocational school in 1891, and in the early 20th century it started drawing notable scientists like George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan. In 1910, the preparatory and vocational schools were dismantled and sold off, and the college adopted its current name in 1920. The precursors of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and run, were founded between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities.

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With six academic divisions and a focus on science and engineering, Caltech managed $332 million in funded research in 2011. Its main campus, which is spread across 124 acres (50 ha), is about 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. At Caltech, 95% of undergraduates stay in the on-campus House System, which is mandatory for first-year students. Although there is a long history of practical jokes and pranks at Caltech, there is an honor code that governs student life and permits professors to give take-home tests. The NCAA Division III Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference is where the Caltech Beavers play in 13 intercollegiate sports (SCIAC) Many contemporary scientific innovations and breakthroughs have been made possible by scientists and engineers at or affiliated with the university, including developments in soft robotics, protein engineering, earthquake monitoring, sustainability science, quantum physics, and earthquake monitoring   With 79 Nobel laureates associated with Caltech as of October 2022, it is the institution in America with the highest concentration of Nobelists.  46 former students and faculty members are included (47 prizes, with chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes). Additionally, Caltech has been home to six Turing Award winners and four Fields Medalists  There are 56 non-emeritus faculty members (along with several emeritus faculty members) who have been elected to one, and there are eight Crafoord Laureates.

Four Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force have received the National Medal of Science or Technology from the United States National Academies, and 71 people have received this honor Both NASA and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have a large number of faculty members as partners In a Pomona College study from 2015, Caltech was ranked first in the nation for the proportion of its graduates who go on to acquire a Ph.D.

The Mount Wilson Observatory was established in 1904 by University of Chicago solar astronomer George Ellery Hale at a time when American scientific study was still in its infancy. In 1907, he became a member of Throop’s board of trustees, and he soon started transforming Pasadena as a whole into a significant scientific and cultural hub. In 1908, he orchestrated the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untrained in science but an effective administrator and fund-raiser. Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus, was built with the help of a $25,000 seed donation from Charles W. Gates, a retired businessman, and trustee.

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A World War

1912’s Throop Hall the Norman Bridge Physics Laboratory was built in 1921.1922 aerial images of Caltech Throop relocated to its current location in 1910. The land for the new campus’ permanent location was given by Arthur Fleming. On March 21, 1911, Theodore Roosevelt gave a speech at Throop Institute and stated I want to see Throop-type institutions produce perhaps 89 out of every 100 students as men who are to perform specific industrial tasks better than anyone else can. I want to see those men perform the kind of work that is currently being done on the Panama Canal and on the large irrigation projects in the country’s interior.

A measure proposing for the creation of a publicly funded “California Institute of Technology” with an initial budget of $1 million—ten times Throop’s then-current budget—was submitted in the California Legislature the same year. The board of trustees proposed handing over Throop to the state, but the presidents of Stanford University and the University of California successfully lobbied to kill the bill. As a result, Throop was able to grow into the only public or private institution in southern California focused on scientific research until the start of World War II forced the expansion of research-based science education the promise of Throop drew MIT physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes to help create and establish the university.

Hale established the National Research Council to coordinate and fund scientific research on military issues as World War I broke out. While he agreed that federal funding for science was a good idea, he opposed a federal measure that would have supported engineering research at land-grant universities. As a result, he worked to build a $1 million national research fund completely from private sources. As a result, Hale stated the following in The New York Times.

A recent example of how the Research Council can obtain cooperation and improve scientific research was provided by the Throop College of Technology in Pasadena, California. With its talented researchers and top-notch research facilities, this institution might be very helpful in any extensive plan of cooperation. When the council was formed, President Scherer promised to participate right away. With this goal in mind, he was able to negotiate a $100,000 additional research endowment within three days. Hale advocated for both Throop to play a national role in science and a wider role for science in national affairs through the National Research Council. With the new funding set aside for physics study, the Norman Bridge Laboratory was eventually established and experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan of the University of Chicago was drawn there in 1917  Hale, Noyes, and Millikan collaborated on the NRC in Washington during the conflict they then kept working together to create Caltech.

In the 1920s, Caltech rose to national prominence under the direction of Hale, Noyes, and Millikan and focused on the creation of Roosevelt’s “Hundredth Man” (helped by the expanding Southern Californian economy). The trustees made the following declaration on November 29, 1921: “To continue to conduct thorough courses in engineering and pure science, basing the work of these courses on exceptionally strong instruction in the fundamental sciences of mathematics, physics, and chemistry; broadening and enriching the curriculum by a liberal amount of instruction in such subjects as engineering, physics, and chemistry.” of the investigative spirit Millikan received the Physics Nobel Prize in 1923. In addition to establishing a geology department, the university also hired William Bennett Munro, who was then the head of the history, government, and economics division at Harvard University, to establish the humanities and social sciences division at Caltech.

Morgan, who at the time was the most renowned biologist in the United States and who discovered how genes and chromosomes affect inheritance Professor George MacGinitie created the Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar in 1930. A graduate aeronautics program was established in 1926 and finally drew Theodore von Kármán. Later, Kármán played a key role in the development of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and helped make Caltech one of the top centers for rocket research in the world. Building on the Palomar Observatory started in 1928From 1921 to 1945, Millikan presided as Caltech’s “Chairman of the Executive Council,” or president, and his influence was so great that the university was sometimes referred to as “Millikan’s School.” Soon after joining Caltech, Millikan started a program for visiting academics. Famous scientists like Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Hendrik Lorentz, and Niels Bohr accepted his invitation.  In order to perfect his Theory of General Relativity, Albert Einstein first visited the Caltech campus in 1931. He later made two additional visits as a visiting lecturer in 1932 and 1933.

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Caltech was one of 131 schools and universities around the country that participated in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which provided students with a route to a Navy commission, during World War A liaison officer to the National Defense Research Committee, resident inspectors of the ordinance and naval materiel, and a navy training school for aeronautical engineering were all maintained on campus by the United States Navy.

Mission Vista

The university in 1944 During the months of April through December 1951, Caltech served as the site of Project Vista, a secret federal research. Caltech was chosen as the project’s host institution because to its strength in nuclear physics and rocketry. The initiative was Caltech’s means of helping the federal government in its efforts to strengthen national security in response to the Korean War and pressure from the Soviet Union The goal of the initiative is to investigate fresh approaches to strengthening the partnership between ground forces and tactical air support. The project was sponsored by the Army, Air Force, and Navy, although the Army had a contract for it. The study was given its name from the hotel that it was situated in, the Vista del Arroyo Hotel. The President Lee A. DuBridge oversaw a committee that handled the study’s operations. Caltech professor William A. Fowler was chosen to lead the research effort. The project was staffed by a number of outside scientists and more than a fourth of Caltech’s faculty If one also counts liaisons with the military, secretarial, and security personnel, the total rises even more. The institution received around $750,000 as payment for taking part.

Post-war expansion

Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, whose work was essential to the development of the Standard Model of particle physics, lived and worked at Caltech from the 1950s until the 1980s. Feynman was also well-known for being a fantastic teacher and a unique, eccentric figure outside of the physics community.

The faculty of Caltech doubled during Lee A. DuBridge’s presidency (1946–1969), while the campus expanded threefold. Unlike his predecessors, DuBridge supported federal support for science. Chemical biology, planetary science, nuclear astrophysics, and geochemistry are a few of the new fields of study that have arisen. On adjacent Palomar Mountain, a 200-inch telescope was dedicated in 1948 and held the title of most potent optical telescope for more than 40 years. In 1970, under Harold Brown’s administration, Caltech opened its doors to female undergraduates, who made up 14% of the entering class.  Since then, there have been more female undergraduates than ever.

Students at Caltech rarely protest.

The first occurred in 1968 when Star Trek cancellation rumors sparked a demonstration in front of the NBC Burbank headquarters. Dabney House students opposed a presidential visit in 1973 by posting a sign outside the library that read simply, “Impeach Nixon.” The president of the National Oil Company, Ross McCollum, addressed an open letter to Dabney House the following week informing them that he had decided not to give a million dollars to Caltech as

Century 21

The Einstein Papers Project has been housed at Caltech since 2000 the project was started in 1986 to compile, preserve, translate, and publish selected materials from Albert Einstein’s literary estate and other collections.

A record number of women (42% of the freshman cohort in autumn 2008) were enrolled as undergraduates at Caltech. The Institute finished a six-year fundraising drive that year. Over 16,000 people contributed more than $1.4 billion to the campaign. Almost half of the money was used to support Caltech projects and activities. Professor Nathan Lewis served as the founding director of the DOE Energy Innovation Hub, which was founded by Caltech in 2010 in collaboration with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Federal financing for this hub, the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, may total up to $122 million over five years.

The Resnick family of The Wonderful Company gave Caltech a contribution of $750 million towards sustainability research in 2019 The grant is the second-biggest private gift to a US academic institution (following Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins University in 2018) and the largest ever for environmental sustainability research The Caltech Board of Trustees authorized the removal of President Robert A. Millikan’s name (and the names of five other historical personalities associated with the Foundation) from campus buildings in January 2021 due to Millikan’s connection to the Human Betterment Foundation.