Archives for Caltech 101

UC or Not UC?

February 1, 2010 - Contemporary descriptions of Caltech often state that the Institute is "an independent, privately supported university, and is not affiliated with either the University of California system or the California State Polytechnic universities." But few who read this disclaimer realize how history almost made it unnecessary. More...

Take Your Vitamins!

April 19, 2004 - The public got its first taste of contemporary nutritional theory in 1940 from Vitamins: What They Are and What They Will Do for You, a book by Caltech biochemist Henry Borsook. More...

Tinker, Thinker, and Stinker

April 12, 2004 - The modern Caltech owes much of its character to the vision of its troika of founders: astronomer George Ellery Hale, physicist Robert Andrews Millikan, and chemist Arthur Amos Noyes (nicknamed by a campus wag "Tinker, Thinker, and Stinker"). More...

Caltech’s “Prehistory”

April 5, 2004 - One November morning in 1891, 35 students walked through the doors of the Wooster Block (now part of the Green Hotel) and attended the first classes of Throop University. Founded by Amos G. Throop, an aging Chicago politician and Universalist minister, Throop was the only school More...

A Magnetic Personality

March 29, 2004 - In the 1960s, Caltech paleoecologist Heinz Lowenstam startled biologists and geologists alike with the discovery that many animals do something conventional science had considered impossible: they manufacture such substances as the iron-containing mineral magnetite within their bodies. More...

"We Are Starstuff"

March 22, 2004 - The name Willy Fowler is practically synonymous with nuclear astrophysics, a field he and his colleagues created in the 1950s. Thanks to their investigations, we now know that all the elements in the universe were originally cooked up inside the stars... More...

Seeing Stars

March 15, 2004 - Research in astronomy and astrophysics at Caltech benefits from an unprecedented collection of ground-based observatories that are available to both faculty and students. More...

The Age of the Earth and the Perils of Lead

March 8, 2004 - How old is the earth? No one knew for sure until 1953, when geochemist Clair C. Patterson established that our planet has existed for 4.55 billion years—something he learned from analyzing the decay rate of lead isotopes in meteorites and in the earth’s oldest rocks. More...

Bonding with Linus

March 1, 2004 - If ever a 20th-century scientist became a household name, it was the illustrious chemist Linus Pauling, whose association with Caltech spanned some five decades. However, the general public probably remembers him best for promoting vitamin C supplements . . . More...

Tales of the Wedding Cake

February 15, 2004 - Beckman Auditorium is the well-known white circular structure that has anchored the north end of campus since 1964. Originally intended as a venue for Earnest Watson's scientific lectures, the auditorium has hosted many other performers as well. More...

Rocket Man

February 8, 2004 - Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-born engineer and applied mathematician who has been called “one of the eight or so certifiable geniuses of the first half of the 20th century,” came to Caltech from Germany in 1926... More...

Movers and Shakers, Part I

February 1, 2004 - How did Caltech become Southern California's premier source of earthquake information and news? The story dates back to the 1930s, when two different traditions--a European interest in global earthquakes and an American concern about local tremors--converged in Pasadena. More...

A Particular Kind of Genius

January 25, 2004 - In 1932, Caltech physicist Carl Anderson discovered the antielectron, or positron, the first empirical proof for the existence of antimatter. His discovery, which came at a time when scientists had identified only two elementary particles of matter (the electron and the proton)... More...

Caltech’s Campus: Spanish Tile to Modern Stone

January 11, 2004 - Strolling through Caltech's 124-acre campus today, it's hard to imagine it in 1910, when Throop Polytechnic Institute moved there from its original location on Chestnut Street between Fair Oaks and Raymond avenues. Twenty-two acres of orange groves were partially cleared More...

A Rage for Phage

January 4, 2004 - Physics and biology formed a memorable alliance in the person of Max Delbrück, the founder of Caltech's renowned "phage group" and a corecipient of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine. More...

The Thrill of Victory . . .

December 27, 2003 - Unfortunately, Caltech's reputation for academic rigor has given rise to another kind of reputation—that Techers do nothing but study. Untrue! More...

Music Hath Charms . . .

December 20, 2003 - Music and theater are alive and well at Caltech—as fun, as therapy, as performance, even as formal instruction. "Musicians" range from near-professional pianists to beginning guitar students to amateur rock bands. Whether students want to play violin in an orchestra or trombone... More...

It's tomorrow, Frosh!

December 6, 2003 - Since 1921, Ditch Day has been a fixture of spring term at Caltech. From its relatively simple beginnings as a day off for seniors, it has grown into an occasion for students to indulge in the most elaborate, inventive pranking imaginable... More...

Machine vs. machine

November 29, 2003 - While many colleges have longtime sports rivalries that bring together their communities in a wild frenzy of school spirit, Caltech has the Mechanical Engineering 72 Design Contest. Each year since 1984, students in the Institute's ME 72 class have staged the competition . . . More...

Breaking Away

November 15, 2003 - As it is for university students everywhere, spring break for Caltech students is a time to unwind: to catch some rays, or some waves, or even just catch up on sleep before the grind of third term begins. Some Techers, however, take a different kind of break . . . More...

"The envelope, please..."

October 25, 2003 - Each year, come October, the atmosphere around Caltech becomes charged with expectation, as the campus awaits the annual announcement of Nobel Prizes. Will another of our faculty or alumni soon be added to this list? More...

Gravity's Rainbow

October 11, 2003 - "Ripples in the fabric of time and space": it sounds like a bit of Star Trek dialog, but it's actually the definition of gravitational waves, phenomena produced by violent events (like the collision of black holes) in the distant universe. Although Einstein predicted them in 1916... More...

Caltech's Curious Character: Richard Feynman

October 4, 2003 - One of the most original thinkers of the 20th century, Richard Feynman--recently named one of the top 10 physicists of all time in a poll taken by the British journal Physics World-- epitomized Caltech for many. More...

"Not Your Average Physicist"

September 27, 2003 - A colleague of Murray Gell-Mann's once remarked, "Murray has no particular talent for physics, but he's so smart, he's a great physicist anyway." Never has someone with "no talent" had a such a profound influence on his field. In the 1950s, when studying the "particle zoo"... More...

Being of Two Minds

September 20, 2003 - Have you ever tried “drawing with the right side of your brain,” or been told that you’re a “right-brained person in a left-brained world”? If so, you’ve come in contact with the work of psychobiologist Roger Sperry, a Caltech faculty member from 1954 to 1984. More...