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- Caltech was founded as Throop University by Amos G. Throop in 1891 and was renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920. In the 1930s, under the leadership of Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan, Caltech gained significant prestige, transforming into a world-class research institution.
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The two most famous in recent history are the changing of the Hollywood Sign to read "Caltech", by judiciously covering up certain parts of the letters, and the changing of the scoreboard to read Caltech 38, MIT 9 during the 1984 Rose Bowl Game.
Jun 29, 1998 · The first Caltech era was created by Hale, Millikan, and Noyes. Thirty years later, after World War II, the physicists Lee Alvin DuBridge and Robert Bacher did the job all over again. DuBridge, the head of MIT’s wartime radar project, became Caltech’s new president in 1946.
- 1920 James A. B. Scherer
- 1921–45 Robert A. Millikan
- 1946–69 Lee A. Dubridge
- 1969–77 Harold Brown
- 1977–78 Robert F. Christy, Acting President
- 1978–87 Marvin L. Goldberger
- 1987–97 Thomas Everhart
- 1997–2006 David Baltimore
- 2006–13 Jean-Lou Chameau
- 2013–14 Edward M. Stolper, Interim President
In 1908, James A. B. Scherer was appointed president of Throop Polytechnic Institute, a forerunner to Caltech. Pasadena philanthropist Amos Throop had established the school in November 1891, and astronomer George Ellery Hale, the first director of the Mount Wilson Laboratory and a member of Throop's board of trustees, appointed Scherer to lead the...
"The very close association of [engineering and science] . . . has in fact been one of the most distinctive objectives in the Institute's development. It is a familiar but a very true observation that the fundamental science of one generation is the applied science of the next." The second person to head the newly named California Institute of Tech...
"Among the colleges and universities of America there are a few which by reason of circumstance, of history and of experience must play especially key roles. These are the institutions which have already shown a capacity for scholarly leadership and which, through the accomplishments of their faculties and graduates, have rendered outstanding servi...
"One of the things that surprised me about my own reaction to Caltech was how quickly I became extremely proud of the place. It's a very infectious spirit, and as you get to see what's going on, you see the quality of the research in science and technology, its variety, and the really outstanding nature of the people. You inevitably become very pro...
"[My concerns with Caltech were] just to try to keep it as good as it was. Under Millikan and DuBridge, it had developed into a fantastic institution, and mostly I wanted to keep it at that level." In 1977, Robert Christy was named Caltech's acting president when Harold Brown left to become secretary of defense under Jimmy Carter. Christy was born ...
"I think the continuing role of the Institute is to train excellent students and to produce excellent research. The fact that the preponderance of effort at Caltech has historically been in the physical and biological sciences doesn't in my mind preclude our having a selective and excellent humanities and social sciences activity." Marvin L. Goldbe...
"We live in the most exciting age in the history of mankind, and we in research, we in academia, we at Caltech, are at the center of the action." When Marvin L. Goldberger resigned from the presidency in 1987 to direct the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, Caltech appointed Thomas Everhart as its next leader. Everhart received ...
"The depth of scholarship, the rigor of training, the commitment to the highest ideals of personal behavior make Caltech a very special place. It manages to cover an extraordinary range of scientific and technical areas with a minimal faculty. It has provided so many new excitements for one trained in biology that it has been a continual feast for ...
"The discoveries, recognition, and impact of the Caltech faculty in a typical year are the envy of our peers. The opportunity to interact with such a special group, and to support their endeavors, is a reward in itself." In 2006, when David Baltimore resigned from the presidency to remain at Caltech as the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biolo...
"Caltech is not a big place. But in my view our small size . . . is a real advantage in that it leads to a sense of community that is very special. . . . It is a great pleasure to walk across our small campus and recognize and talk with people across a wide swath of intellectual pursuits. As David Baltimore is fond of saying, it is probably the las...
- Phil Baty
- It is very small. Some 249 students make up the freshman class of 2017 at Caltech (drawn from 5,535 applications). There is a total of just 977 undergraduate students, 1,204 graduate students, and an overall student-faculty ratio of 3:1.
- It is truly interdisciplinary. Being so small means that academic interdisciplinarity is a necessity at Caltech. With just 300 professorial faculty and around 600 research scholars, academic staff need to share resources, work together and work beyond traditional disciplinary silos to get things done.
- It hires scholars extremely carefully. With so few academics (some major fields such as information science and technology have little more than a dozen faculty) Caltech cannot afford to make mistakes when it hires - one bad apple could taint the entire barrel.
- It offers real freedom and strong support for junior faculty. While many universities may typically hire three or four junior faculty to compete for one senior post, Caltech, owing to its diminutive size, will hire just one - but it will choose them extremely carefully and give them all the support they need to succeed.
May 9, 2024 · Originally, the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at Caltech (GALCIT) was a research institute created in 1928 with funds provided by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. In 1930, Theodore von Karman was invited to become its first director, until his retirement in 1949.
Oct 8, 2024 · Caltech is small but prizes excellence and ambition. The contributions of Caltech's faculty and alumni have earned national and international recognition, including 46 Nobel Prizes.
Oct 3, 2024 · In 1958 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech, operating in conjunction with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, launched Explorer I, the first U.S. satellite, and it subsequently conducted other programs of space and lunar exploration.
