| California Institute of Technology | |
|---|---|
| Motto | "The truth shall make you free"[1] |
| Established | 1891 |
| Type | Private |
| Endowment | US $1.55 billion[2] |
| President | Jean-Lou Chameau |
| Academic staff | 294 professorial faculty 1207 other faculty[3] |
| Students | 2231[4] |
| Undergraduates | 978[4] |
| Postgraduates | 1253[4] |
| Location | Pasadena, California, U.S. |
| Campus | Suburban, 124 acres (50 ha) |
| Colors | Orange and White |
| Athletics | NCAA Division III |
| Mascot | Beaver |
| Website | caltech.edu |
The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)[5] is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Karman.[6][7]
Despite its small size, 31 Caltech alumni and faculty have won the Nobel Prize and 66 have won the National Medal of Science or Technology.[3] There are 109 faculty members who have been elected to the National Academies. In addition, numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA.[3] Caltech managed $332 million in sponsored research and $1.55 billion for its endowment in 2010.[2][8] Caltech was ranked first in the 2011–2012 Times Higher Education worldwide rankings of universities as well as ranking first in physical science and engineering.[9] It also has a long standing rivalry with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
First year students are required to live on campus and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus house system. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks,[10] student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
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Caltech began as 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.[8][11] The vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form an independent Polytechnic School in 1907.
At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904. He joined Throop's board of trustees in 1907, and soon began developing it and the whole of Pasadena into a major scientific and cultural destination. He engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untutored in science but a capable administrator and fund raiser, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus.[12]
In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arther Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address at Throop Institute on March 21, 1911, and he declared:
I want to see institutions like Throop turn out perhaps ninety-nine of every hundred students as men who are to do given pieces of industrial work better than any one else can do them; I want to see those men do the kind of work that is now being done on the Panama Canal and on the great irrigation projects in the interior of this country—and the one-hundredth man I want to see with the kind of cultural scientific training that will make him and his fellows the matrix out of which you can occasionally develop a man like your great astronomer, George Ellery Hale.[13]
In the same year, a bill was introduced in the California Legislature calling for the establishment of a publicly funded "California Institute of Technology," with an initial budget of a million dollars, ten times the budget of Throop at the time. The board of trustees offered to turn Throop over to the state, but the presidents of Stanford University and the University of California successfully lobbied to defeat the bill, which allowed Throop to develop as the only scientific research-oriented education institute in southern California, public or private, until the onset of the World War II necessitated the broader development of research-based science education.[14] The promise of Throop attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes from MIT to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science and technology.
With the onset of World War I, Hale organized the National Research Council to coordinate and support scientific work on military problems. While he supported the idea of federal appropriations for science, he took exception to a federal bill that would have funded engineering research at land-grant colleges, and instead sought to raise a $1 million national research fund entirely from private sources. To that end, as Hale wrote in the New York Times:
Throop College of Technology, in Pasadena California has recently afforded a striking illustration of one way in which the Research Council can secure co-operation and advance scientific investigation. This institution, with its able investigators and excellent research laboratories, could be of great service in any broad scheme of cooperation. President Scherer, hearing of the formation of the council, immediately offered to take part in its work, and with this object, he secured within three days an additional research endowment of one hundred thousand dollars.[15]
Through the National Research Council, Hale simultaneously lobbied for science to play a larger role in national affairs, and for Throop to play a national role in science. The new funds were designated for physics research, and ultimately lead to the establishment of the Norman Bridge Laboratory, which attracted experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan from the University of Chicago in 1917.[16] During the course of the war, Hale, Noyes and Millikan worked together in Washington on the NRC. Subsequently, they continued their partnership in developing Caltech.[15]
Under the leadership of Hale, Noyes and Millikan (aided by the booming economy of Southern California), Caltech grew to national prominence in the 1920s and concentrated on the development of Roosevelt's "Hundredth Man". On November 29, 1921, the trustees declared it to be the express policy of the Institute to pursue scientific research of the greatest importance and at the same time "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 English, history, and economics; and vitalizing all the work of the Institute by the infusion in generous measure of the spirit of research."[13] In 1923, Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in 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 at the time, and discoverer of the role of genes and the chromosome in heredity. In 1930, Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory was established in Corona del Mar under the care of Professor George MacGinitie. In 1926, a graduate school of aeronautics was created, which eventually attracted Theodore von Kármán. Kármán later helped create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and played an integral part in establishing Caltech as one of the world's centers for rocket science. In 1928, construction of the Palomar Observatory began.
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." Millikan initiated a visiting-scholars program soon after joining Caltech. Scientists who accepted his invitation include luminaries such as Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Hendrik Lorentz and Niels Bohr.[17] Albert Einstein arrived on the Caltech campus for the first time in 1931 to polish up his Theory of General Relativity, and he returned to Caltech subsequently as a visiting professor in 1932 and 1933.[18]
During World War II, Caltech was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.[19]
In the 1950s-1970s, Caltech was the home of Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, whose work was central to the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics. Feynman was also widely known outside the physics community as an exceptional teacher and colorful, unconventional character.
During Lee A. DuBridge's tenure as Caltech's president (1946–1969), Caltech's faculty doubled and the campus tripled in size. DuBridge, unlike his predecessors, welcomed federal funding of science. New research fields flourished, including chemical biology, planetary science, nuclear astrophysics, and geochemistry. A 200-inch telescope was dedicated on nearby Palomar Mountain in 1948 and remained the world's most powerful optical telescope for over forty years.[20]
Caltech opened its doors to female undergraduates during the presidency of Harold Brown in 1970, and they made up 14% of the entering class.[21] The fraction of female undergraduates has been increasing since then.[3]
Caltech undergraduates have historically been so apathetic to politics that there has been only one organized student protest in January 1968 outside the Burbank studios of NBC, in response to rumors that NBC was to cancel Star Trek. In 1973, the students from Dabney House protested a presidential visit with a sign on the library bearing the simple phrase "Impeach Nixon". The following week, Ross McCollum, president of the National Oil Company, wrote an open letter to Dabney House stating that in light of their actions he had decided not to donate one million dollars to Caltech. The Dabney family, being Republicans, disowned Dabney House after hearing of the prank.[22]
Since 2000, the Einstein Papers Project has been located at Caltech.[23] The project was established in 1986 to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein and from other collections.
In fall 2008, the freshman class was 42% female, a record for Caltech's undergraduate enrollment.[3] In the same year, the Institute concluded a six-year long fund-raising campaign. The campaign raised more than $1.4 billion from about 16,000 donors. Nearly half of the funds went into the support of Caltech programs and projects.[24]
In 2010, Caltech, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, established a DOE Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight. This hub, the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, will receive up to $122 million in federal funding over five years.[25]
A TEDx was organized in 2011, called TEDxCaltech. The theme of the event was Feynman's Vision: The Next 50 Years. The speakers included Caltech faculty and students, as well as external professors and entrepreneurs.[26]
Caltech's 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located in Pasadena, California, approximately 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is within walking distance of Old Town Pasadena and the Pasadena Playhouse District and therefore the two locations are frequent getaways for Caltech students.
In 1917 Hale hired architect Bertram Goodhue to produce a master plan for the 22 acres (8.9 ha) campus. Goodhue conceived the overall layout of the campus and designed the physics building, Dabney Hall, and several other structures, in which he sought to be consistent with the local climate, the character of the school, and Hale's educational philosophy. Goodhue's designs for Caltech were also influenced by the traditional Spanish mission architecture of Southern California.
In 1971 a magnitude-6.6 earthquake in San Fernando caused some damage to the Caltech campus. Engineers who evaluated the damage found that two historic buildings dating from the early days of the Institute — Throop Hall and the Goodhue-designed Culbertson Auditorium — had cracked. These were some of the first reinforced concrete buildings, and their plans did not contain enough details (such as how much reinforcing bar had been embedded in the concrete) to be sure they were safe, so the engineers recommended demolition. However, demolishing these historic structures required considerably more effort than would have been necessary had they been in real danger of collapse. A large wrecking ball was used to demolish Throop Hall, and smashing the concrete revealed massive amounts of rebar, far in excess of safety requirements. The rebar had to be cut up before the pieces could be hauled away, and the process took much longer than expected.
New additions to the campus include the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology, which opened in 2009,[27][28] and the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering followed in March 2010.[29] The Institute also concluded an upgrading of the south houses in 2006. In late 2010, Caltech completed a 1.3 MW solar array projected to produce approximately 1.6 GWh in 2011.[30]
The mission statement of Caltech reads:
The mission of the California Institute of Technology is to expand human knowledge and benefit society through research integrated with education. We investigate the most challenging, fundamental problems in science and technology in a singularly collegial, interdisciplinary atmosphere, while educating outstanding students to become creative members of society.[3]
Caltech is incorporated as a non-profit corporation and is governed by a privately appointed 46-member board of trustees who serve five year terms of office and retire at the age of 72.[11][31] The current board is chaired by Kent Kresa, former chairman and CEO of Northrup Grumman and former chairman of General Motors.[32] The Trustees elect a President to serve as the chief executive officer of the Institute and administer the affairs on the Institute on behalf of the board, a Provost who serves as the chief academic officer of the Institute below the President, and ten other vice presidential and other senior positions.[31] Former Georgia Tech provost Jean-Lou Chameau became the eighth president of Caltech on September 1, 2006, replacing David Baltimore who had served since 1997.[33] Dr. Chameau's compensation for 2008–2009 totaled $799,472.[34] Edward M. Stolper is the Institute's ninth provost and is responsible for academic budget, faculty appointments and promotions, and coordinates curriculum.[35] Caltech's $1.55 billion endowment is governed by a permanent Trustee committee and administered by an Investment Office.[2]
The Institute is organized into six primary academic divisions: Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Engineering and Applied Science, Geological and Planetary Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. The voting faculty of Caltech include all professors, instructors, research associates and fellows, and librarians. Faculty are responsible for establishing admission requirements, academic standards, and curricula. The Faculty Board is the faculty's representative body and consists of 18 elected faculty representatives as well as other senior administration officials. Full-time professors are expected to teach classes, conduct research, advise students, and perform administrative work such as serving on committees.[36]
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) owned by NASA and operated as a division of Caltech through a contract between NASA and Caltech. In 2008, JPL spend over $1.6 billion on research and development and employed over 5,000 project-related and support employees.[37] The JPL Director also serves as a Caltech Vice President and is responsible to the President of the Institute for the management of the Laboratory.[32]
| University rankings (overall) | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| ARWU[38] | 5 |
| Forbes[39] | 13 |
| U.S. News & World Report[40] | 5 |
| Washington Monthly[41] | 69 |
| Global | |
| ARWU[42] | 6 |
| QS[43] | 12 |
| Times[44] | 1 |
Caltech is a small four-year, highly residential research university with a slight majority in graduate programs.[45] The Institute has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges since 1949.[46][47] Caltech is on the quarter system:[48] the fall term starts in late September and ends before Christmas, the second term starts after New Years Day and ends in mid-March, and the third term starts in late March or early April and ends in early June.[49]
Caltech was ranked 1st internationally in 2011 by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings.[50] Caltech was ranked as the best university in the world within the Engineering and Technology Universities category[51] and second best within the Physical Sciences Universities category.[52] It was also found to have the highest faculty citation rate in the world.[53]
Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities, a ranking with an emphasis on bibliometric data and scientific research, ranked Caltech 6th in the world and 5th in the U.S. for 2010. Caltech was also found to have the highest score for per-capita performance in that ranking.[54]
U.S. News & World Report ranked Caltech as the 5th best university in the United States in their 2012 national college rankings, together with MIT, Stanford University, University of Chicago and University of Pennsylvania.[55] According to the U.S. News & World Report's Best Graduate Schools 2011 ranking, "California Institute of Technology headlines the new rankings, with top billing in three categories: chemistry, earth sciences and physics."[56]
The United States National Research Council released its latest Assessment of Research Doctorate Programs in 2010, and 23 of the 24 graduate programs of Caltech were ranked within the top four programs in the nation in their size quartile as determined by both the R95 and S95 rankings. Of particular note, programs that were placed within the top 10% of all size programs in that field based on an average of the R95 and S95 rank order include Aeronautics, Astrophysics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Bioengineering, Biology, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Electrical Engineering, Environmental Science and Engineering, Geology, Geophysics, Materials Science, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Planetary Science, and Social Science (Economics).[57]
The full time, four year undergraduate program emphasizes instruction in the arts and sciences and has high graduate coexistence.[45] Caltech offers 24 majors (called "options") and six minors across all six academic divisions.[58] Caltech also offers interdisciplinary programs in Applied Physics, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Computation and Neural Systems, Control and Dynamical Systems, Environmental Science and Engineering, Geobiology and Astrobiology, Geochemistry, and Planetary Astronomy. The most popular options are Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Physics.[59]
Caltech requires students to take a core curriculum of 30 classes: five terms of mathematics, five terms of physics, two terms of chemistry, one term of biology, a freshman elective "menu" course, two terms of introductory lab courses, 2 terms of science writing, and 12 terms of humanities.[60] A typical class is worth 9 academic units and given the extensive core curriculum requirements in addition to individual options' degree requirements, students need to take an average of 40.5 units per term (more than four classes) in order to graduate in four years. 36 units is the minimum full-time load, 48 units is considered a heavy load, and registrations above 54 units require an overload petition.[61] Approximately 20 percent of students double-major.[62] This is achievable since the humanities and social sciences majors have been designed to be done in conjunction with a science major. Although choosing two options in the same division is discouraged, it is still possible.
First year students are enrolled in first-term classes based upon results of placement exams in math, physics, chemistry, and writing and take all classes in their first two terms on a Pass/Fail basis.[61] There is little competition; collaboration on homework is encouraged and the Honor System encourages take-home tests and flexible homework schedules.[63] Caltech offers co-operative programs with other schools, such as the Pasadena Art Center College of Design and Occidental College.
Undergraduate tuition for the 2011–2012 school year was $36,387 and total annual costs were estimated to be $54,090.[64] In 2010–2011, Caltech awarded $14.2 million in need-based aid, $940k in non-need-based aid, and $2.35 million in self-help support to every enrolled undergraduate student. The average financial aid package of all students eligible for need-based aid was $34,928 and students graduated with an average debt of $9,561.[48]
Upon graduation, Caltech alumni have the highest median starting salary among graduates of other colleges or universities in 2010-2011, of $69,900, according to PayScale. The mid-career median pay is $120,000.[65] Caltech was found to offer the highest return of investment of college education, at $1,713,000 over a 30-year period, according to the same study.[66]
Caltech offers Army and Air Force ROTC in cooperation with the University of Southern California.[48]
The graduate instructional programs emphasize doctoral studies and are dominated by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields.[45] The Institute offers graduate degree programs for the Master of Science, Engineer's Degree, Doctor of Philosophy, BS/MS and MD/PhD, with the majority of students in the PhD program.[45] The most popular options are Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering.[59] Applicants for graduate studies are required to take the GRE. GRE Subject scores are either required or strongly recommended.[67]
The research facilities at Caltech are available to graduate students, but there are opportunities for students to work in facilities of other universities, research centers as well as private industries.[68] The graduate student to faculty ratio is 4:1.[69]
Approximately 99% of doctoral students have full financial support. Financial support for graduate students comes in the form of fellowships, research assistantships, teaching assistantships or a combination of fellowship and assistantship support.[70]
Graduate students are bound by the Honor Code, as are the undergraduates, and the Graduate Review Board oversees any violations of the code.
Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and remains a research university with "very high" research activity, primarily in STEM fields.[6][45] Caltech manages research expenditures of $270 million annually,[71] 66th among all universities in the U.S. and 17th among private institutions without medical schools for 2008.[72][73] The largest federal agencies contributing to research are NASA, National Science Foundation, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Defense, and Department of Energy.[74] Caltech received $144 million in federal funding for the physical sciences, $40.8 million for the life sciences, $33.5 million for engineering, $14.4 million for environmental sciences, $7.16 million for computer sciences, and $1.97 million for mathematical sciences in 2008.[75]
The Institute was awarded an all-time high funding of $357 million in 2009.[76] Active funding from the National Science Foundation Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Science (MPS) for Caltech stands at $343 million as of 2011, the highest for any educational institution in the nation, and higher than the total funds allocated to any state except California and New York.[77]
In 2005, Caltech had 739,000 square feet (68,700 m2) dedicated to research: 330,000 square feet (30,700 m2) to physical sciences, 163,000 square feet (15,100 m2) to engineering, and 160,000 square feet (14,900 m2) to biological sciences.[78]
In addition to managing JPL, Caltech also operates the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, the Owens Valley Radio Observatory in Bishop, California, the Submillimeter Observatory and W. M. Keck Observatory at the Mauna Kea Observatory, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory at Livingston, Louisiana and Richland, Washington, and Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory in Corona del Mar, California.[36] The Institute launched the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech in 2006,[79] the Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2008, and is also the current home for the Einstein Papers Project. The Spitzer Science Center (SSC), part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center located on the Caltech campus, is the data analysis and community support center for NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Undergraduates at Caltech are also encouraged to participate in research. About 80% of the class of 2010 did research through the annual Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF) program at least once during their stay, and many continued during the school year.[80] Students write and submit SURF proposals for research projects in collaboration with professors, and about 70 percent of applicants are awarded SURFs. The program is open to both Caltech and non-Caltech undergraduate students. It serves as preparation for graduate school and helps to explain why Caltech has the highest percentage of alumni who go on to receive a PhD of all the major universities.[81]
The licensing and transferring of technology to the commercial sector is managed by the Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). OTT protects and manages the intellectual property developed by faculty members, students, other researchers, and JPL technologists. Caltech receives more invention disclosures per faculty member than any other university in the nation.[82] As of 2008, 1891 patents were granted to Caltech researchers since 1969.[83]
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. Four south houses (or hovses) were built: Blacker House, Dabney House, Fleming House and Ricketts House. In the 1960s, three north houses were built: Lloyd House, Page House, and Ruddock House, and during the 1990s, Avery House. The four south houses closed for renovation in 2005 and reopened in 2006. All first year students live in the house system and 95% of undergraduates remain in it.[48][84]
Caltech has athletic teams in baseball, men's and women's basketball, cross country, fencing, men's soccer, swimming and diving, men's and women's tennis, track and field, women's volleyball, and men's and women's water polo.[85] Caltech's mascot is the Beaver, and its teams (with the exception of the fencing team) play in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, which Caltech co-founded in 1915.[86] The fencing team[87] competes in the NCAA's Division I, facing teams from USC, UCLA, UCSD, and Stanford, among others.
On January 6, 2007, the Beavers' men's basketball team snapped a 207-game losing streak to Division III schools, beating Bard College 81-52. It was their first Division III victory since 1996.[88] Until their win over Occidental on February 22, 2011[89] the team had not won a game in conference play since 1985. Ryan Elmquist's free throw with 3.3 seconds in regulation gave the Beavers the victory.[90][91] The documentary film Quantum Hoops concerns the events of the Beavers' 2005–06 season.
On January 13, 2007, the Caltech women's basketball team snapped a 50-game losing streak, defeating the Pomona–Pitzer Sagehens 55-53. The women's program, which entered the SCIAC in 2002, garnered their first conference win. On the bench as honorary coach for the evening was Dr. Robert Grubbs, 2005 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.[92] The team went on to beat Whittier College on February 10, for its second SCIAC win, and placed its first member on the All Conference team.[93] The 2006-2007 season is the most successful season in the history of the program.
On October 22, 2008, the soccer team snapped a 201-game losing streak with a last-second goal against Cal Lutheran University, 1-0.
In 2007, 2008, and 2009, the women's table tennis team (a club team) competed in nationals. The women's Ultimate club team, known as "Snatch", has also been very successful in recent years, ranking 44 of over 200 college teams in the Ultimate Player's Association.[94]
Every Halloween, Dabney House conducts the infamous "Millikan pumpkin-drop experiment" from the top of Millikan Library, the highest point on campus. According to tradition, a claim was once made that the shattering of a pumpkin frozen in liquid nitrogen and dropped from a sufficient height would produce a triboluminescent spark. This yearly event involves a crowd of observers, who try to spot the elusive spark. The title of the event is an oblique reference to the famous Millikan oil-drop experiment which measured e, the elemental unit of electrical charge.
On Ditch Day, the seniors ditch school, leaving behind elaborately designed tasks and traps at the doors of their rooms to prevent underclassmen from entering. Over the years this has evolved to the point where many seniors spend months designing mechanical, electrical, and software obstacles to confound the underclassmen. Each group of seniors designs a "stack" to be solved by a handful of underclassmen. The faculty have been drawn into the event as well, and cancel all classes on Ditch Day so the underclassmen can participate in what has become a highlight of the academic year. In 2010, Ditch Day fell on May 21.
Another long-standing tradition is the playing of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries at 7:00 each morning during finals week with the largest, loudest speakers available. The playing of that piece is not allowed at any other time (except if one happens to be listening to the entire 15 hours of The Ring Cycle), and any offender is dragged 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, a Caltech alumnus. Unfortunately, the tradition arose at different times in different Houses, so Schmitt did not react as expected. Instead, he just became confused.
Caltech students have been known for the many pranks (also known as "RFs").
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. But the most famous of all occurred during the 1961 Rose Bowl Game, where Caltech students altered the flip-cards that were raised by the stadium attendees to display "Caltech", and several other "unintended" messages. This event is now referred to as the Great Rose Bowl Hoax.
In 2005, a group of Caltech students pulled a string of pranks during MIT's Campus Preview Weekend for admitted students. These include covering up the word Massachusetts in the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" engraving on the main building façade with a banner so that it read "That Other Institute of Technology". A group of MIT hackers responded by altering the banner so that the inscription read "The Only Institute of Technology." Caltech students also passed out T-shirts to MIT's incoming freshman class that had MIT written on the front and "... because not everyone can go to Caltech" along with an image of a palm tree on the back.
MIT retaliated in April 2006, when students posing as the Howe & Ser (Howitzer) Moving Company stole the 130-year-old, 1.7-ton Fleming House cannon and moved it to their campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts for their 2006 Campus Preview Weekend, repeating a similar prank performed by nearby Harvey Mudd College in 1986. Thirty members of Fleming House traveled to MIT and reclaimed their cannon on April 10, 2006.
On April 13, 2007 (Friday the 13th), a group of students from The California Tech, Caltech's campus newspaper, arrived and distributed fake copies of The Tech, MIT's campus newspaper, while prospective students were visiting for their Campus Preview Weekend. Articles included "MIT Invents the Interweb," "Architects Deem Campus 'Unfortunate'," and "Infinite Corridor Not Actually Infinite."
In recent years, pranking has been officially encouraged by Tom Mannion, Caltech's Assistant VP for Student Affairs and Campus Life. "The grand old days of pranking have gone away at Caltech, and that's what we are trying to bring back," reported the Boston Globe, which noted that "security has orders not to intervene in a prank unless officers get Mannion's approval beforehand."[95]
Caltech pranks have been documented in three Legends of Caltech books, the most recent of which was edited by alumni Autumn Looijen '99 and Mason A. Porter '98 and published in May 2007.
In December 2009, some Caltech students declared that MIT had been sold and had become the Caltech East campus. A "sold" banner was hung on front of the MIT dome building and a "Welcome to Caltech East: School of the Humanities" banner over the Massachusetts Avenue Entrance. Newspapers and t-shirts were distributed, and door labels and fliers in the infinite corridor were put up in accordance with the "curriculum change."[96][97]
In September 2010, MIT students attempted to put a TARDIS, the time machine from the BBC's Doctor Who, onto a roof. Caught in midact, the prank was aborted. In January 2011, Caltech students in conjunction with MIT students helped put the TARDIS on top of Baxter.[98] Caltech students then moved the TARDIS to UC Berkeley[99] and Stanford.[100]
In December 2011, Caltech students went to New York and pulled a prank on Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The prank involved making The Cube sculpture look like the Valve Corporation Weighted Companion Cube from the video game Portal.[101]
Life in the Caltech community is governed by the Honor Code, which simply states: "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, which consists of undergraduate students,[102] and by a similar body at the graduate level, called the Graduate Review Board.[103]
The Honor Code aims at promoting an atmosphere of respect and trust that allows Caltech students to enjoy privileges that make for a more relaxed atmosphere. For example, the Honor Code allows professors to make the majority of exams as take-home, allowing students to take them on their own schedule and in their preferred environment.
Through the late 1990s, the only exception to the Honor Code, implemented earlier in the decade in response to changes in federal regulations, concerned the sexual harassment policy. Today, there are myriad exceptions to the Honor Code in the form of new institute policies such as the Fire Policy, and Alcohol Policy. Though both policies are presented in the Honor Code Handbook given to new members of the Caltech Community, large portions of the undergraduate population regard them as a slight against the Honor Code and the implicit trust and respect it represents within the community.[104]
As of 2010, Caltech has 31 Nobel laureates to its name. This figure includes 17 alumni, 14 non-alumni professors, and 4 professors who are also alumni (Carl D. Anderson, Linus Pauling, William A. Fowler, and Edward B. Lewis). The number of awards is 32, because Pauling received prizes in both Chemistry and Peace. With fewer than 25,000 alumni in total, more than one in 1,400 have received the Nobel Prize — a ratio unmatched by any other university. Six faculty and alumni have received a Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, while 56 have been awarded the U.S. National Medal of Science, and 10 have received the National Medal of Technology.[3][105] One alumnus, Stanislav Smirnov, won the Fields Medal in 2010. Other distinguished researchers have been affiliated with Caltech as postdoctoral scholars (for example, Barbara McClintock, James D. Watson and Sheldon Glashow) or visiting professors (for example, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Edward Witten).
| Undergraduate | Graduate | |
|---|---|---|
| Caucasian American | 35% | 43% |
| Asian American | 39% | 11% |
| Underrepresented minority | 11% | 6% |
| Other/International | 12% | 39% |
Caltech enrolled 978 undergraduate students and 1253 graduate students for the 2011–2012 school year. Women made up 39% of the undergraduate and 28% of the graduate student body.[4] 68% of non-international freshmen are from out of state. Caltech received 5,225 applications for the Class of 2015: 667 were admitted (12.8%) and 244 of them enrolled. The interquartile range for first year students' SAT scores was 2200 to 2340. 99% of students were ranked in the top tenth of their high school graduating class.[106]
The four-year graduation rate is 80.7% and the six-year rate is 90.3%,[48] which is low compared to most leading U.S. universities,[107] but substantially higher than it was in the 1960s and 70s.[108] Students majoring in STEM fields traditionally have graduation rates below 70%.[109]
Richard Feynman was perhaps the most well-known physicist to be associated with Caltech, having published the Feynman Lectures on Physics, an undergraduate physics text, and a few other popular science texts such as Six Easy Pieces for the general audience. The promotion of physics made him a public figure of science, although his Nobel-winning work in quantum electrodynamics was already very established in the scientific community. Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel-winning physicist, introduced a classification of hadrons and went on to postulate the existence of quarks, which is currently accepted as part of the Standard Model. Linus Pauling pioneered quantum chemistry and molecular biology, and he went on to solve for the nature of the chemical bond in 1939. Seismologist Charles Richter, also an alumnus, developed the magnitude scale that bears his name, the Richter scale for measuring the power of earthquakes. In engineering, Theodore von Kármán made many key advances in aerodynamics, notably his work on supersonic and hypersonic airflow characterization. A repeating pattern of swirling vortices is named after him, the von Kármán vortex street. More recently, Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy, discovered many trans-Neptunian objects, most notably the dwarf planet Eris, which prompted the International Astronomical Union to redefine the term "planet".
David Baltimore, the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology, and Alice Huang, Senior Faculty Associate in Biology, have served as the President of AAAS from 2007–2008 and 2010-2011 respectively.[110]
33 percent of the faculty are members of the National Academy of Science or Engineering and/or fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. This is the highest percentage of any faculty in the country with the exception of the graduate institution Rockefeller University.[111]
The average salary for assistant professors at Caltech is $108,100, associate professors $112,400, and full professors $171,500.[112] Caltech faculty are highly productive in the fields of applied physics, astronomy and astrophysics, biology, biochemistry, biological engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, geology, mechanical engineering and physics.[113]
17 alumni and 14 non-alumni faculty have won the Nobel Prize. The Turing Award, the "Nobel Prize of Computer Science", has been awarded to six alumni, and one has won the Fields Medal.[114]
Alumni have participated in scientific research. Some have concentrated their studies on the very small universe of atoms and molecules. Nobel laureate Carl D. Anderson (BS 1927, PhD 1930) proved the existence of positrons and muons, Nobel laureate Edwin McMillan (BS 1928, MS 1929) synthesized the first transuranium element, Nobel laureate Leo James Rainwater (BS 1939) investigated the non-spherical shapes of atomic nuclei, and Nobel laureate Douglas D. Osheroff (BS 1967) studied the superfluid nature of helium-3. Donald Knuth (PhD 1963), the "father" of the analysis of algorithms, wrote The Art of Computer Programming and created the TeX computer typesetting system, which is commonly used in the scientific community.
Other alumni have turned their gaze to the universe. C. Gordon Fullerton (BS 1957, MS 1958) piloted the third space shuttle mission and orbited the earth in Skylab. Astronaut (and later, United States Senator) Harrison Schmitt (BS 1957) was the only geologist to have ever walked on the surface of the moon.[115] Astronomer Eugene Merle Shoemaker (BS 1947, MS 1948) co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (a comet which crashed into the planet Jupiter) and was the first person buried on the moon (by having his ashes crashed into the moon).[116]
Undergraduate alumni founded, or co-founded, companies such as LCD manufacturer Varitronix,[117] Hotmail,[118] Compaq,[119] and MathWorks (which created Matlab),[120] while graduate students founded, or co-founded, companies such as Intel,[121] TRW,[122] and the non-profit educational organization, the Exploratorium.[123]
Arnold Beckman (PhD 1928) invented the pH meter and commecialized it with the founding of Beckman Instruments. His success with that company enabled him to provide seed funding for William Shockley (BS 1932), who had co-invented semiconductor transistors and wanted to commercialize them. Because his aging mother was living in Palo Alto, California at the time, Shockley decided to establish his laboratory near her[124] in 1955, in neighboring Mountain View, California,[125] and thus, Shockley became the founding Director of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments.[125] Shockely was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, but his aggressive management style and odd personality[126] at the Shockley Lab became unbearable.[127] In late 1957, eight of his researchers, known now as the "Traitorous Eight" (or "Fairchildren"), resigned and joined Fairchild Camera and Instruments nearby to form a semiconductor division. Among the "Traitorous Eight" was Gordon E. Moore (PhD 1954), who later left Fairchild to co-found Intel. Other offspring companies of Fairchild Semiconductor include National Semiconductor and Advanced Micro Devices, which in turn spawned more technology companies in the area. Shockley's decision to use silicon -- instead of germanium -- as the semiconductor material, coupled with the abundance of silicon semiconductor related companies in the area, gave rise to the term "Silicon Valley"[128] to describe that geographic region surrounding Palo Alto.
Caltech alumni also held public offices, with James Fletcher (PhD 1948) being the 4th and 7th Administrator of NASA, Steven Koonin (PhD 1972) being the Undersecretary of Energy for Science and Regina Dugan (PhD 1993) being the director of DARPA.
Caltech has appeared in several works of popular culture, both as itself and in disguised form. As with MIT, a Caltech reference is often used to establish a character's high level of intelligence or a technical background. For example, on television, the four male lead characters of the sitcom The Big Bang Theory are all employed at the Institute, as well as in the TV show Criminal Minds, where the character Dr. Spencer Reid attended this school for multiple degrees. Caltech is also the inspiration, and frequent film location, for the California Institute of Science of Numb3rs.[130] On film, the Pacific Tech of The War of the Worlds[131] and Real Genius[130] is based on Caltech. In nonfiction, two 2007 documentaries examine aspects of Caltech; Curious, its researchers,[132][133] and Quantum Hoops, its men's basketball team.
Given its Los Angeles-area location, the grounds of the Institute are often host to short scenes in movies and television. The Athenaeum dining club appears in the Beverly Hills Cop series, The X-Files, True Romance, and The West Wing.[134] Other examples include Legally Blonde, The Wedding Planner, Greek, The O.C., Entourage and Mission Impossible.
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