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The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a
"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect
. The institute is also occasionally referred to as "CIT", most notably in its alma mater, but this is uncommon.
is a
private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
research university A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kno ...
in
Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...
. Caltech is ranked among the best and most selective academic institutions in the world, and with an enrollment of approximately 2400 students (acceptance rate of only 5.7%), it is one of the world's most selective universities. The university is known for its strength in science and engineering, and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States which is primarily devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences. The institution was founded as a preparatory and vocational school by
Amos G. Throop Amos Gager Throop ( ; 1811–1894) was an American businessman and politician in Chicago, Illinois during the 1840s and 1850s. Most famously he was known for being a staunch abolitionist prior to the Civil War. He served as a Chicago alderma ...
in 1891 and began attracting influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale,
Arthur Amos Noyes Arthur Amos Noyes (September 13, 1866 – June 3, 1936) was an American chemist, inventor and educator. He received a PhD in 1890 from Leipzig University under the guidance of Wilhelm Ostwald. He served as the acting president of MIT between ...
, and
Robert Andrews Millikan Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric e ...
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 1920. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the
Association of American Universities The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 63 universities in the United States ( ...
, and the antecedents of
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's
Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under
Theodore von Kármán Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research. Its primary campus is located approximately northeast of
downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...
. First-year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus
House System at Caltech The house system is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Caltech's unique house system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the ...
. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks, 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 The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...
's
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference The Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) is a college athletic conference that operates in the NCAA's Division III. The conference was founded in 1915 and it consists of twelve small private schools that are located i ...
(SCIAC). Scientists and engineers at or from the university have played an essential role in many modern scientific breakthroughs and innovations, including advancements in sustainability science,
quantum physics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qua ...
, earthquake monitoring, protein engineering, and
soft robotics Soft robotics is a subfield of robotics that concerns the design, control, and fabrication of robots composed of compliant materials, instead of rigid links. In contrast to rigid-bodied robots built from metals, ceramics and hard plastics, the ...
. , there are 79 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with Caltech, including 46 alumni and faculty members (47 prizes, with chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes); in addition, 4 Fields Medalists and 6 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Caltech. There are 8 Crafoord Laureates and 56 non-emeritus faculty members (as well as many emeritus faculty members) who have been elected to one of the
United States National Academies The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (also known as NASEM or the National Academies) are the collective scientific national academy of the United States. The name is used interchangeably in two senses: (1) as an umbrell ...
, 4 Chief Scientists of the U.S. Air Force and 71 have won the United States
National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
or
Technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
. Numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA. According to a 2015
Pomona College Pomona College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became t ...
study, Caltech ranked number one in the U.S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD.


History


Throop College

Caltech started as a vocational school founded in present-day
Old Pasadena Old Pasadena, often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or just Old Town, is the original commercial center of Pasadena, a city in California, United States, and had a latter-day revitalization after a period of decay. Old Pasadena began as the ce ...
on
Fair Oaks Avenue Fair Oaks Avenue in Pasadena, California, is a major north–south road connecting the communities of Altadena, Pasadena, and South Pasadena, running in length. It starts at its southernmost end in South Pasadena at Huntington Drive. It travels ...
and Chestnut Street on September 23, 1891, by local businessman and politician
Amos G. Throop Amos Gager Throop ( ; 1811–1894) was an American businessman and politician in Chicago, Illinois during the 1840s and 1850s. Most famously he was known for being a staunch abolitionist prior to the Civil War. He served as a Chicago alderma ...
. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute (and Manual Training School) and Throop College of Technology before acquiring its current name in 1920. The vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form the independent
Polytechnic School Polytechnic School, often referred to simply as Poly, is a college preparatory private day school located in Pasadena, California with approximately 850 students enrolled in grades Kindergarten through 12. The school is a former member of the ...
in 1907. At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, natural satellite, moons, comets and galaxy, g ...
from the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
, founded the
Mount Wilson Observatory The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The observat ...
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.


World Wars

In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arthur Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site.
Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
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 The Panama Canal ( es, Canal de Panamá, link=no) is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean and divides North and South America. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit ...
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.
In the same year, a bill was introduced in the
California Legislature The California State Legislature is a bicameral state legislature consisting of a lower house, the California State Assembly, with 80 members; and an upper house, the California State Senate, with 40 members. Both houses of the Legislatu ...
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 Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
and the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, ...
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. The promise of Throop attracted
physical chemist Physical chemistry is the study of macroscopic and microscopic phenomena in chemical systems in terms of the principles, practices, and concepts of physics such as motion, energy, force, time, thermodynamics, quantum chemistry, statistical me ...
Arthur Amos Noyes Arthur Amos Noyes (September 13, 1866 – June 3, 1936) was an American chemist, inventor and educator. He received a PhD in 1890 from Leipzig University under the guidance of Wilhelm Ostwald. He served as the acting president of MIT between ...
from
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science and technology. With the onset of
World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, Hale organized the
National Research Council National Research Council may refer to: * National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development * National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome * National Research Council (United States), part of ...
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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'':
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.
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 led to the establishment of the Norman Bridge Laboratory, which attracted experimental
physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
Robert Andrews Millikan Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric e ...
from the
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
in 1917. 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. Under the leadership of
Hale Hale may refer to: Places Australia *Hale, Northern Territory, a locality *Hale River, in southeastern Northern Territory Canada *Hale, Ontario, in Algoma District United Kingdom * Hale, Cumbria, a hamlet near Beetham, Cumbria *Hale, Greater Man ...
, Noyes, and Millikan (aided by the booming economy of
Southern California Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most po ...
), 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". In 1923, Millikan was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
. 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 Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, to create a division of
humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
and
social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of soc ...
s at Caltech. In 1928, a division of
biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
was established under the leadership of
Thomas Hunt Morgan Thomas Hunt Morgan (September 25, 1866 – December 4, 1945) was an American evolutionary biologist, geneticist, embryologist, and science author who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933 for discoveries elucidating the role that ...
, the most distinguished biologist in the United States at the time, and discoverer of the role of genes and the
chromosome A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...
in heredity. In 1930,
Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory The William G. Kerckhoffbr>Marine Laboratory'' is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is located 101 Dahlia Street, in the Corona del Mar district of Newport Beach, in Orange County, California. History T ...
was established in Corona del Mar under the care of Professor George MacGinitie. In 1926, a graduate school of
aeronautics Aeronautics is the science or art involved with the study, design, and manufacturing of air flight–capable machines, and the techniques of operating aircraft and rockets within the atmosphere. The British Royal Aeronautical Society identifies ...
was created, which eventually attracted
Theodore von Kármán Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
. 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. Notable scientists who accepted his invitation include
Paul Dirac Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (; 8 August 1902 – 20 October 1984) was an English theoretical physicist who is regarded as one of the most significant physicists of the 20th century. He was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the Univer ...
,
Erwin Schrödinger Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger (, ; ; 12 August 1887 – 4 January 1961), sometimes written as or , was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian physicist with Irish citizenship who developed a number of fundamental results in quantum theo ...
,
Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...
, Hendrik Lorentz and
Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. B ...
.
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
arrived on the Caltech campus for the first time in 1931 to polish up his
Theory of General Relativity General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. G ...
, and he returned to Caltech subsequently as a visiting professor in 1932 and 1933. During World War II, Caltech was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the
V-12 Navy College Training Program The V-12 Navy College Training Program was designed to supplement the force of commissioned officers in the United States Navy during World War II. Between July 1, 1943, and June 30, 1946, more than 125,000 participants were enrolled in 131 colleg ...
which offered students a path to a Navy commission. The
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
also maintained a naval training school for
aeronautical engineering Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is sim ...
, resident inspectors of ordinance and naval material, and a liaison officer to the
National Defense Research Committee The National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) was an organization created "to coordinate, supervise, and conduct scientific research on the problems underlying the development, production, and use of mechanisms and devices of warfare" in the Un ...
on campus.


Project Vista

From April to December 1951, Caltech was the host of a federal classified study, Project Vista. The selection of Caltech as host for the project was based on the university's expertise in rocketry and nuclear physics. In response to the war in Korea and the pressure from the Soviet Union, the project was Caltech's way of assisting the federal government in its effort to increase national security. The project was created to study new ways of improving the relationship between tactical air support and ground troops. The Army, Air Force, and Navy sponsored the project; however, it was under contract with the Army. The study was named after the hotel, Vista del Arroyo Hotel, which housed the study. The study operated under a committee with the supervision of President Lee A. DuBridge.
William A. Fowler William Alfred Fowler ( ) was an American nuclear physicist, later astrophysicist, who, with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is known for his theoretical and experimental research into nuclear reactions wit ...
, a professor at Caltech, was selected as research director. More than a fourth of Caltech's faculty and a group of outside scientists staffed the project. Moreover, the number increases if one takes into account visiting scientists, military liaisons, secretarial, and security staff. In compensation for its participation, the university received about $750,000.


Post-war growth

From the 1950s to 1980s, Caltech was the home of
Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...
and
Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...
, 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 a 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 In the United States, federal assistance, also known as federal aid, federal benefits, or federal funds, is defined as any federal program, project, service, or activity provided by the federal government that directly assists domestic governme ...
of science. New research fields flourished, including chemical biology, planetary science,
nuclear astrophysics Nuclear astrophysics is an interdisciplinary part of both nuclear physics and astrophysics, involving close collaboration among researchers in various subfields of each of these fields. This includes, notably, nuclear reactions and their rates as ...
, and
geochemistry Geochemistry is the science that uses the tools and principles of chemistry to explain the mechanisms behind major geological systems such as the Earth's crust and its oceans. The realm of geochemistry extends beyond the Earth, encompassing the ...
. 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. Caltech opened its doors to female undergraduates during the presidency of Harold Brown in 1970, and they made up 14% of the entering class. The portion of female undergraduates has been increasing since then. Protests by Caltech students are rare. The earliest was a 1968 protest outside the
NBC The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
Burbank studios, in response to rumors that NBC was to cancel '' Star Trek''. In 1973, the students from
Dabney House The house system is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Caltech's unique house system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the ...
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 A national oil company (NOC) is an oil and gas company fully or in the majority-owned by a national government. According to the World Bank, NOCs accounted for 75% global oil production and controlled 90% of proven oil reserves in 2010. Due to thei ...
, 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 protest.


21st century

Since 2000, the
Einstein Papers Project The Einstein Papers Project (EPP) produces the historical edition of the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein. The EPP collects, transcribes, translates, annotates, and publishes materials from Einstein's literary estate and a multitude ...
has been located at Caltech. 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. 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. In 2010, Caltech, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and headed by Professor Nathan Lewis, 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 The Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP), founded in 2010, is a (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub whose primary mission is to find a cost-effective method to produce fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon-dioxide. The program has a budg ...
, will receive up to $122 million in federal funding over five years. Since 2012, Caltech began to offer classes through
massive open online course A massive open online course (MOOC ) or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, man ...
s (MOOCs) under
Coursera Coursera Inc. () is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses ...
, and from 2013, edX. Jean-Lou Chameau, the eighth president, announced on February 19, 2013, that he would be stepping down to accept the presidency at
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; ar, جامعة الملك عبد الله للعلوم و التقنية ') is a private research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 2009, the university provid ...
. Thomas F. Rosenbaum was announced to be the ninth president of Caltech on October 24, 2013, and his term began on July 1, 2014. In 2019, Caltech received a gift of $750 million for sustainability research from the Resnick family of
The Wonderful Company The Wonderful Company LLC, formerly known as Roll Global, is a private corporation based in Los Angeles, California. With revenues of over $4 billion, it functions as a holding company for Stewart and Lynda Resnick and as such is a vehicle for ...
. The gift is the largest ever for environmental sustainability research and the second-largest private donation to a US academic institution (after Bloomberg's gift of $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University in 2018). On account of President Robert A. Millikan's affiliation with the
Human Betterment Foundation The Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) was an American eugenics organization established in Pasadena, California in 1928 by E.S. Gosney and Rufus B. von KleinSmid with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protecti ...
, in January 2021, the Caltech Board of Trustees authorized the removal of Millikan's name (and the names of five other historical figures affiliated with the Foundation), from campus buildings.


Campus

Caltech's primary campus is located in
Pasadena, California Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. I ...
, approximately northeast of
downtown Los Angeles Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) contains the central business district of Los Angeles. In addition, it contains a diverse residential area of some 85,000 people, and covers . A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs. It is ...
. It is within walking distance of
Old Town Pasadena Old Pasadena, often referred to as Old Town Pasadena or just Old Town, is the original commercial center of Pasadena, a city in California, United States, and had a latter-day revitalization after a period of decay. Old Pasadena began as the ce ...
and the Pasadena Playhouse District and therefore the two locations are frequent getaways for Caltech students. In 1917 Hale hired architect
Bertram Goodhue Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue (April 28, 1869 – April 23, 1924) was an American architect celebrated for his work in Gothic Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival design. He also designed notable typefaces, including Cheltenham and Merrymount for ...
to produce a master plan for the 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. During the 1960s, Caltech underwent considerable expansion, in part due to the philanthropy of alumnus
Arnold O. Beckman Arnold Orville Beckman (April 10, 1900 – May 18, 2004) was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of th ...
. In 1953, Beckman was asked to join the Caltech Board of Trustees. In 1964, he became its chairman. Over the next few years, as Caltech's president emeritus
David Baltimore David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technol ...
describes it, Arnold Beckman and his wife Mabel "shaped the destiny of Caltech". In 1971 a magnitude-6.6 earthquake in
San Fernando San Fernando may refer to: People *Ferdinand III of Castile (c. 1200–1252), called ''San Fernando'' (Spanish) or ''Saint Ferdinand'', King of Castile, León, and Galicia Places Argentina *San Fernando de la Buena Vista, city of Greater Buenos ...
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. New additions to the campus include the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the
Walter Walter may refer to: People * Walter (name), both a surname and a given name * Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968) * Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 19 ...
and
Leonore Annenberg Leonore Cohn Annenberg (February 20, 1918 – March 12, 2009), also known as Lee Annenberg, was an American businesswoman, diplomat, and philanthropist. She was noted for serving as Chief of Protocol of the United States from 1981 to 1982. Annenb ...
Center for Information Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, and the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering followed in March 2010. The institute also concluded an upgrading of the South Houses in 2006. In late 2010, Caltech completed a 1.3 MW
solar array A photovoltaic system, also PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and ...
projected to produce approximately 1.6 GWh in 2011.


Organization and administration

Caltech is incorporated as a non-profit corporation and is governed by a privately appointed 46-member
board of trustees A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
who serve five-year terms of office and retire at the age of 72. 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. Thomas F. Rosenbaum became the ninth president of Caltech in 2014. Caltech's endowment is governed by a permanent trustee committee and administered by an investment office. The institute is organized into six primary academic divisions: Biology and Biological Engineering, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Engineering and Applied Science, Geological and Planetary Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. The voting faculty of Caltech include all professors, instructors, research associates and fellows, and the University Librarian. 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. Founded in 1930s, the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...
(JPL) is a
federally funded research and development center Federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) are public-private partnerships that conduct research and development for the United States Government. Under Federal Acquisition Regulationbr>§ 35.017 FFRDCs are operated by univ ...
(FFRDC) owned by
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
and operated as a division of Caltech through a contract between NASA and Caltech. In 2008, JPL spent over $1.6 billion on research and development and employed over 5,000 project-related and support employees. 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.


Academics

Caltech is a small four-year, highly residential research university with slightly more students in graduate programs than undergraduate. The institute has been accredited by the
Western Association of Schools and Colleges The Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) was an organization providing School accreditation, accreditation of public and private universities, colleges, secondary school, secondary and elementary schools in California and Hawaii, ...
since 1949. Caltech is on the
quarter system An academic quarter refers to the division of an academic year into four parts. Historical context The modern academic quarter calendar can be traced to the historic English law court / legal training pupillage four term system: * Hilary: Ja ...
: the fall term starts in late September and ends before Christmas, the second term starts after New Year's Day and ends in mid-March, and the third term starts in late March or early April and ends in early June.


Rankings

Caltech is consistently ranked within the top ten universities in the world, and within the top four in the United States, by major global ranking systems. In 2021, Caltech ranked 6th globally based on aggregate world university rankings of ''
THE ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the ...
'', QS, and '' ARWU.'' For 2022, '' U.S. News & World Report'' ranked Caltech as tied for 9th in the United States among national universities overall, 11th for most innovative, and 15th for best value. ''U.S. News & World Report'' also ranked the graduate programs in chemistry and earth sciences first among national universities. Caltech was ranked 1st internationally between 2011 and 2016 by the ''
Times Higher Education World University Rankings The ''Times Higher Education World University Rankings'' (often referred to as the THE Rankings) is an annual publication of university rankings by the ''Times Higher Education'' (THE) magazine. The publisher had collaborated with Quacquarelli ...
''. Caltech was ranked as the best university in the world in two categories: Engineering & Technology and Physical Sciences. It was also found to have the highest faculty citation rate in the world.


Admissions

Admission to Caltech is extremely rigorous and requires the highest test scores in the nation. For the 2022 academic year, Caltech was ranked by
CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', ''CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 H ...
as the 3rd hardest college in America to gain acceptance to. The middle 50% range of
SAT The SAT ( ) is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. Since its debut in 1926, its name and scoring have changed several times; originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, it was later called the Schol ...
scores for enrolled freshmen for the class of 2023 were 740–780 for evidence-based reading and writing and 790–800 for math, and 1530–1570 total. The middle 50% range ACT Composite score was 35–36. The SAT Math Level 2 middle 50% range was 800–800. The middle 50% range for the SAT Physics Subject Test was 760–800; SAT Chemistry Subject Test was 760–800; SAT Biology Subject Tests was 760–800. In June 2020, Caltech announced a test-blind policy where they would not require nor consider test scores for the next two years; in July 2021, the moratorium was extended by another year. For the Class of 2025 (enrolled Fall 2021), Caltech received approximately 17,000 applications and accepted 2% of applicants; 270 enrolled. The class included 45% women and 55% men. 32% were of underrepresented ancestry (which includes students who self-identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic/Latino, Black/African American, and/or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander), and 6% were foreign students.


Tuition and financial aid

Undergraduate tuition for the 2021–2022 school year was $56,394 and total annual costs were estimated to be $79,947 excluding the Caltech Student Health Insurance Plan. In 2012–2013, Caltech awarded $17.1 million in need-based aid, $438k in non-need-based aid, and $2.51 million in self-help support to enrolled undergraduate students. The average financial aid package of all students eligible for aid was $38,756 and students graduated with an average debt of $15,090.


Undergraduate program

The full-time, four-year undergraduate program emphasizes instruction in the arts and sciences and has high graduate coexistence. Caltech offers 28 majors (called "options") and 12 minors across all six academic divisions. 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. Prior to the entering class of 2013, Caltech required students to take a core curriculum of five terms of mathematics, five terms of physics, two terms of chemistry, one term of biology, two terms of lab courses, one term of scientific communication, three terms of physical education, and 12 terms of humanities and social science. Since 2013, only three terms each of mathematics and physics have been required by the institute, with the remaining two terms each required by certain options. 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) to graduate in four years. 36 units is the minimum full-time load, 48 units is considered a heavy load, and registrations above 51 units require an overload petition. Approximately 20 percent of students double-major. 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. There is little competition; collaboration on
homework Homework is a set of tasks assigned to students by their teachers to be completed outside the classroom. Common homework assignments may include required reading, a writing or typing project, mathematical exercises to be completed, informatio ...
is encouraged and the honor system encourages take-home tests and flexible homework schedules. Caltech offers co-operative programs with other schools, such as the Pasadena
Art Center College of Design Art Center College of Design (stylized as ArtCenter College of Design) is a private art college in Pasadena, California. History ArtCenter College of Design was founded in 1930 in downtown Los Angeles as the Art Center School. In 1935, Fred ...
and Occidental College. According to a
PayScale Payscale is an American compensation software and data company which helps employers manage employee compensation and employees understand their worth in the job market. The website was launched on January 1, 2002. It was founded by Joe Giordano a ...
study, Caltech graduates earn a median early career salary of $83,400 and $143,100 mid-career, placing them in the top 5 among graduates of US colleges and universities. The average net return on investment over a period of 20 years is $887,000, the tenth-highest among US colleges. Caltech offers Army and Air Force ROTC in cooperation with the
University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
.


Graduate program

The graduate instructional programs emphasize doctoral studies and are dominated by science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields. 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. The most popular options are Chemistry, Physics, Biology, Electrical Engineering and Chemical Engineering. Applicants for graduate studies are required to take the
GRE The Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) is a standardized test that is an admissions requirement for many graduate schools in the United States and Canada and a few other countries. The GRE is owned and administered by Educational Testing Servi ...
. GRE Subject scores are either required or strongly recommended by several options. A joint program between Caltech and the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and the
UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine—known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM)—is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The school was renamed in 2001 in h ...
grants MD/PhD degrees. Students in this program do their preclinical and clinical work at USC or
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
, and their PhD work with any member of the Caltech faculty, including the Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering and Applied Sciences Divisions. The MD degree would be from USC or UCLA and the PhD would be awarded from Caltech. 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. The graduate student to faculty ratio is 4:1. Approximately 99 percent 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. Graduate students are bound by the honor code, as are the undergraduates, and the Graduate Honor Council oversees any violations of the code.


Research

Caltech is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". Caltech was elected to the
Association of American Universities The Association of American Universities (AAU) is an organization of American research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education. Founded in 1900, it consists of 63 universities in the United States ( ...
in 1934 and remains a research university with "very high" research activity, primarily in
STEM fields Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...
. Caltech manages research expenditures of $270 million annually, 66th among all universities in the U.S. and 17th among private institutions without medical schools for 2008. The largest federal agencies contributing to research are
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
,
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
,
Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
,
Department of Defense Department of Defence or Department of Defense may refer to: Current departments of defence * Department of Defence (Australia) * Department of National Defence (Canada) * Department of Defence (Ireland) * Department of National Defense (Philipp ...
, and
Department of Energy A Ministry of Energy or Department of Energy is a government department in some countries that typically oversees the production of fuel and electricity; in the United States, however, it manages nuclear weapons development and conducts energy-re ...
. 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. The institute was awarded an all-time high funding of $357 million in 2009. Active funding from the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
Directorate of Mathematical and Physical Science (MPS) for Caltech stands at $343 million , the highest for any educational institution in the nation, and higher than the total funds allocated to any state except California and New York. In 2005, Caltech had dedicated to research: to physical sciences, to engineering, and to biological sciences. In addition to managing JPL, Caltech also operates the Palomar Observatory in
San Diego County San Diego County (), officially the County of San Diego, is a county in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,298,634, making it California's second-most populous county and the f ...
, the
Owens Valley Radio Observatory Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) is a radio astronomy observatory located near Big Pine, California (US) in Owens Valley. It lies east of the Sierra Nevada, approximately north of Los Angeles and southeast of Bishop. It was established in 1 ...
in
Bishop, California Bishop (formerly Bishop Creek) is a city in California, United States. It is the largest populated place and only incorporated city in Inyo County. Bishop is located near the northern end of the Owens Valley, at an elevation of . The city was ...
, the Submillimeter Observatory and
W. M. Keck Observatory The W. M. Keck Observatory is an astronomical observatory with two telescopes at an elevation of 4,145 meters (13,600 ft) near the summit of Mauna Kea in the U.S. state of Hawaii. Both telescopes have aperture primary mirrors, and when comp ...
at the
Mauna Kea Observatory The Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) are a group of independent astronomical research facilities and large telescope observatories that are located at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, United States. The facilities are locate ...
, the
Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory designed to detect cosmic gravitational waves and to develop gravitational-wave observations as an astronomical tool. Two large ...
at
Livingston, Louisiana Livingston is the parish seat of Livingston Parish, Louisiana, United States. The population was 1,769 at the 2010 census. Livingston hosts one of the two LIGO gravitational wave detector sites, the other one being located in Hanford, Washin ...
and
Richland, Washington Richland () is a city in Benton County, Washington, United States. It is located in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Yakima and the Columbia Rivers. As of the 2020 census, the city's population was 60,560. Along with the nearby c ...
, and
Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory The William G. Kerckhoffbr>Marine Laboratory'' is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). It is located 101 Dahlia Street, in the Corona del Mar district of Newport Beach, in Orange County, California. History T ...
in Corona del Mar, California. The Institute launched the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at Caltech in 2006, the Keck Institute for Space Studies in 2008, and is also the current home for the
Einstein Papers Project The Einstein Papers Project (EPP) produces the historical edition of the writings and correspondence of Albert Einstein. The EPP collects, transcribes, translates, annotates, and publishes materials from Einstein's literary estate and a multitude ...
. The Spitzer Science Center (SSC), part of the
Infrared Processing and Analysis Center The Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) provides science operations, data management, data archives and community support for astronomy and planetary science missions. IPAC has a historical emphasis on infrared-submillimeter astronomy a ...
located on the Caltech campus, is the data analysis and community support center for
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...
's Spitzer Space Telescope. Caltech partnered with
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
to establish a Joint Center for Translational Medicine (UCLA-Caltech JCTM), which conducts experimental research into clinical applications, including the diagnosis and treatment of diseases such as cancer. Caltech operates several
TCCON The Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON) is a global network of instruments that measure the amount of carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and other trace gases in the Earth's atmosphere. The TCCON ( ) began in 2004 w ...
stations as part of an international collaborative effort of measuring greenhouse gases globally. One station is on campus. 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. 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. The licensing and transferring of technology to the commercial sector is managed by the Office of
Technology Transfer Technology transfer (TT), also called transfer of technology (TOT), is the process of transferring (disseminating) technology from the person or organization that owns or holds it to another person or organization, in an attempt to transform invent ...
(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. , 1891 patents were granted to Caltech researchers since 1969.


Student life


House system

During the early 20th century, a Caltech committee visited several universities and decided to transform the undergraduate housing system from
fraternities A fraternity (from Latin ''frater'': "brother"; whence, " brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club or fraternal order traditionally of men associated together for various religious or secular aims. Fraternity ...
to a house system. Four South Houses (or ''Hovses'', as styled in the stone engravings) were built: Blacker House,
Dabney House The house system is the basis of undergraduate student residence at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Caltech's unique house system is modeled after the residential college system of Oxford and Cambridge in England, although the ...
, Fleming House and Ricketts House. In the 1960s, three North Houses were built:
Lloyd House Lloyd House may refer to: People * Lloyd House (politician), Arizona state representative from 1967 to 1968 Buildings ;in the Netherlands * Lloyd Hotel, Dutch national monument in Amsterdam in the United Kingdom *Lloyd House, Birmingham in the U ...
,
Page House Page House may refer to: Canada * Enos W. Page House, Lockeport, Nova Scotia, a historic place in Shelburne County, Nova Scotia United States * Page House (Caltech), California, a residential house at the California Institute of Technology * He ...
, and Ruddock House, and during the 1990s,
Avery House Avery House may refer to: *Avery House, a dormitory within the House System at the California Institute of Technology * Avery House (Fort Collins, Colorado), a National Register of Historic Places listing in Larimer County, Colorado *Avery House (G ...
. The four South Houses closed for renovation in 2005 and reopened in 2006. The latest addition to residential life at Caltech is Bechtel Residence, which opened in 2018. It is not affiliated with the house system. All first- and second-year students live on campus in the house system or in the Bechtel Residence. On account of Albert B. Ruddock's affiliation with the
Human Betterment Foundation The Human Betterment Foundation (HBF) was an American eugenics organization established in Pasadena, California in 1928 by E.S. Gosney and Rufus B. von KleinSmid with the aim "to foster and aid constructive and educational forces for the protecti ...
, in January 2021, the Caltech Board of Trustees authorized the removal of Ruddock's name from campus buildings. Ruddock House was renamed as the Grant D. Venerable House.


Athletics

Caltech has athletic teams in baseball, men's and women's basketball, cross country, men's and women'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. Caltech's mascot is the Beaver, a homage to nature's engineer. Its teams are members of the
NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...
Division III In sport, the Third Division, also called Division 3, Division Three, or Division III, is often the third-highest division of a league, and will often have promotion and relegation with divisions above and below. Association football *Belgian Thir ...
and compete in the
Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference The Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) is a college athletic conference that operates in the NCAA's Division III. The conference was founded in 1915 and it consists of twelve small private schools that are located i ...
(SCIAC), which Caltech co-founded in 1915. On January 6, 2007, the Beavers' men's basketball team snapped a 207-game losing streak to Division III schools, beating
Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 1860, ...
81–52. It was their first Division III victory since 1996. Until their win over Occidental College on February 22, 2011 the team had not won a game in SCIAC play since 1985. Ryan Elmquist's free throw with 3.3 seconds in regulation gave the Beavers the victory. The documentary film ''
Quantum Hoops ''Quantum Hoops'' is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Rick Greenwald, that follows the California Institute of Technology's basketball team—the Caltech Beavers—in their attempts to end a 21-year losing streak during the final week o ...
'' 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 Pitzer is a surname, and may refer to: *Alexander White Pitzer (1834–1927), American Presbyterian clergyman *Kenneth Sanborn Pitzer (1914–1997), American theoretical chemist *Russell Kelly Pitzer (1878–1978), American businessman and philanth ...
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. The team went on to beat
Whittier College Whittier College (Whittier Academy (1887–1901)) is a private liberal arts college in Whittier, California. It is a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) and, as of fall 2022, had approximately 1,300 (undergraduate and graduate) students. It was ...
on February 10, for its second SCIAC win, and placed its first member on the All Conference team. In 2007, 2008, and 2009, the women's table tennis team (a club team) competed in nationals. The women's
Ultimate Ultimate or Ultimates may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music Albums * ''Ultimate'' (Jolin Tsai album) * ''Ultimate'' (Pet Shop Boys album) *''Ultimate!'', an album by The Yardbirds *''The Ultimate (Bryan Adams Album)'', a compilatio ...
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. On February 2, 2013, the Caltech baseball team ended a 228-game losing streak, the team's first win in nearly 10 years. The track and field team's home venue is at the South Athletic Field in
Tournament Park Tournament Park is a park and athletics venue in Pasadena, California, United States, northeast of Los Angeles. Currently maintained by the California Institute of Technology, it was simply known as the "town lot" before being renamed "Tournament ...
, the site of the first Rose Bowl Game. The school also sponsored a football team prior to 1976, which played part of its home schedule at the Rose Bowl, or, as Caltech students put it, "to the largest number of empty seats in the nation".


Performing and visual arts

The Caltech/ Occidental College Orchestra is a full seventy-piece orchestra composed of students, faculty, and staff at Caltech and nearby Occidental College. The orchestra gives three pairs of concerts annually, at both Caltech and Occidental College. There are also two Caltech Jazz Bands and a Concert Band, as well as an active chamber music program. For vocal music, Caltech has a mixed-voice
Glee Club A glee club in the United States is a musical group or choir group, historically of male voices but also of female or mixed voices, which traditionally specializes in the singing of short songs by trios or quartets. In the late 19th century it w ...
and the smaller Chamber Singers. The theater program at Caltech is known as TACIT, or Theater Arts at the California Institute of Technology. There are two to three plays organized by TACIT per year, and they were involved in the production of the PHD Comics#Piled Higher and Deeper: the Movie, PHD Movie, released in 2011.


Student life traditions


Annual events

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 triboluminescence, 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 oil-drop experiment, Millikan oil-drop experiment which measured ''e'', the elementary charge, 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. 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 14 hours and 5 minutes of ''The Ring Cycle''), and any offender is dragged into the showers to be drenched in cold water fully dressed.


Pranks

Caltech students have been known for their many Student prank, 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, 1984 Rose Bowl Game. But the most famous of all occurred during the 1961 Rose Bowl, 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 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''. In December 2011, Caltech students went to New York and pulled a prank in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. The prank involved making Alamo (sculpture), The Cube sculpture look like the Aperture Science Weighted Companion Cube from the video game ''Portal (video game), Portal''. 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 Porter '98 and published in May 2007.


= Rivalry with MIT

= 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 Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 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 over 3,000 miles 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 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." 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. Caltech students then moved the TARDIS to UC BerkeleyDr. Who's TARDIS Lands at MIT, Caltech, and Berkeley
, by Alessondra Springmann, PC World (magazine), PCWorld, February 10, 2011
and Stanford. In April 2014, during MIT's Campus Preview Weekend, a group of Caltech students handed out mugs emblazoned with the MIT logo on the front and the words "The Institute of Technology" on the back. When heated, the mugs turn orange, display a palm tree, and read "Caltech The Hotter Institute of Technology." Identical mugs continue to be sold at the Caltech campus store.


Honor code

Life in the Caltech community is governed by the academic honor code, 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, and by a similar body at the graduate level, called the Graduate Honor Council. 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. Although both policies are presented in the Honor System Handbook given to new members of the Caltech community, some undergraduates regard them as a slight against the honor code and the implicit trust and respect it represents within the community. In recent years, the Student Affairs Office has also taken up pursuing investigations independently of the Board of Control and Conduct Review Committee, an implicit violation of both the honor code and written disciplinary policy that has contributed to further erosion of trust between some parts of the undergraduate community and the administration.


Notable people

As of October 2022, Caltech has 46 Nobel Prize, Nobel laureates to its name awarded to 28 alumni, which includes 5 Caltech professors who are also alumni (Carl D. Anderson, Linus Pauling, William A. Fowler, Edward B. Lewis, and Kip Thorne), and 18 non-alumni professors. The total number of Nobel Prizes is 47 because Pauling received prizes in both Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemistry and Nobel Prize in Peace, Peace. Eight faculty and alumni have received a Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, while 58 have been awarded the U.S.
National Medal of Science The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social scienc ...
, and 11 have received the National Medal of Technology. 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, Sheldon Glashow and John Gurdon) or visiting professors (for example,
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
, Stephen Hawking and Edward Witten).


Students

Caltech enrolled 987 undergraduate students and 1,410 graduate students for the 2021–2022 school year. Women made up 45% of the undergraduate and 33% of the graduate student body. The racial demographics of the school substantially differ from those of the nation as a whole. The four-year graduation rate is 79% and the six-year rate is 92%, which is low compared to most leading U.S. universities, but substantially higher than it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Students majoring in
STEM fields Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is an umbrella term used to group together the distinct but related technical disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The term is typically used in the context of ...
traditionally have graduation rates below 70%.


Alumni

There are 22,930 total living alumni in the U.S. and around the world. As of October 2021, 25 alumni and 17 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. Many alumni have participated in scientific research. Some have concentrated their studies on the very small universe of atoms and molecules. Nobel Prize, 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. Bruce Reznick (BS 1973) is a mathematician noted for his contributions to number theory and the combinatorial-algebraic-analytic investigations of polynomials. Narendra Karmarkar (MS 1979) is known for the interior point method, a polynomial algorithm for linear programming known as Karmarkar's algorithm. Other alumni have turned their gaze to the universe. C. Gordon Fullerton (BS 1957, MS 1958) piloted the third Space Shuttle mission. Astronaut (and later, United States Senate, United States Senator) Harrison Schmitt (BS 1957) was the only geologist to have walked on the surface of the Moon. 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). Astronomer George O. Abell (BS 1951, MS 1952, PhD 1957) while a grad student at Caltech participated in the National Geographic Society-Palomar Sky Survey. This ultimately resulted in the publication of the ''Abell Catalogue of Clusters of Galaxies,'' the definitive work in the field. Undergraduate alumni founded, or co-founded, companies such as LCD manufacturer Varitronix, Hotmail, Compaq, MathWorks (which created Matlab), and database provider Imply Data, Imply, while graduate students founded, or co-founded, companies such as Intel, TRW Inc., TRW, and the non-profit educational organization, the Exploratorium. Arnold Orville Beckman, Arnold Beckman (PhD 1928) invented the pH meter and commercialized 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. Shockley became the founding Director of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory division of Beckman Instruments. Shockley had previously worked at Bell Labs, whose first president was another alumnus, Frank B. Jewett, Frank Jewett (BS 1898). Because his aging mother lived in Palo Alto, California, Shockley established his laboratory near her in Mountain View, California. Shockley was a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, but his aggressive management style and odd personality at the Shockley Lab became unbearable. In late 1957, eight of his researchers resigned and with support from Sherman Fairchild formed Fairchild Semiconductor. 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" to describe that geographic region surrounding Palo Alto. Caltech alumni also held public offices, with Mustafa A.G. Abushagur (PhD 1984) the Deputy Prime Minister of Libya and Prime Minister-Elect of Libya, James C. Fletcher, James Fletcher (PhD 1948) the 4th and 7th Administrator of NASA, Steven E. Koonin, Steven Koonin (PhD 1972) the Under Secretary of Energy for Science, Undersecretary of Energy for Science, and Regina E. Dugan, Regina Dugan (PhD 1993) the 19th director of DARPA. The 20th director for DARPA, Arati Prabhakar, is also a Caltech alumna (PhD 1984) as well as Charles Elachi (Phd 1971), former director of the Jet Propulsion Lab. Arvind Virmani is a former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. In 2013, President Obama announced the nomination of France Cordova (PhD 1979) as the director of the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
and Ellen Williams (PhD 1982) as the director for ARPA-E. File:Carl anderson.1937.jpg, Nobel laureate Carl David Anderson, BS 1927, PhD 1930, discoverer of the positron and the muon File:Douglas Osheroff.jpg, Nobel laureate Douglas D. Osheroff, BS 1967 File:William Shockley, Stanford University.jpg, Nobel laureate William Shockley, BS 1932, co-inventor of the Solid state (electronics), solid state transistor, father of Silicon Valley File:Edwin McMillan Nobel.jpg, Nobel laureate Edwin McMillan, BS 1928, MS 1929 File:VernonSmith2.jpg, Nobel laureate Vernon L. Smith, Vernon Smith, BS 1949 File:Fernando Corbato.jpg, Turing Award laureate Fernando J. Corbató, BS 1950 File:KnuthAtOpenContentAlliance.jpg, Turing Award laureate Donald Knuth, PhD 1963, "father" of the analysis of algorithms, creator of TeX typesetting system File:John McCarthy Stanford.jpg, Turing Award laureate John McCarthy (computer scientist), John McCarthy, BS 1948, inventor of the Lisp (programming language), Lisp programming language File:Gordon Fullerton 1989.jpg, Astronaut C. Gordon Fullerton, BS 1957, MS 1958 File:Harrison H. Schmitt.jpg, Astronaut and United States Senate, United States Senator Harrison Schmitt, BS 1957, the only geologist to have walked on the moon File:Dr Mustafa Abushagur.JPG, Libyan Deputy Prime Minister & Libyan Prime Minister-Elect Mustafa A.G. Abushagur, PhD 1984 File:Tsien Hsue-shen.jpg, Qian Xuesen, PhD 1939, co-founder of JPL, "Father" of Chinese rocketry File:Arnold Beckman early portrait 2.65.tif, Arnold Orville Beckman, PhD 1928, inventor of the pH meter, founder of Beckman Instruments and the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation File:Gordon Moore.jpg, Gordon Moore, PhD 1954, co-founder of Intel File:Carver Mead at CHM Apr-2005.jpg, National Medal of Technology laureate Carver Mead, BS 1956, MS 1957, PhD 1960 File:Benoit Mandelbrot mg 1804b.jpg, Benoit Mandelbrot, MS 1948, Engineering 1949, father of fractal geometry, namesake of the Mandelbrot set File:Charlie Munger (cropped).jpg, Charlie Munger, studied meteorology at Caltech, investor, Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway File:Frank Capra.JPG, Frank Capra, BS Chemical Engineering 1918 (when Caltech was known as the "Throop Institute"); winner of six Academy Awards in directing and producing; producer and director of ''It's a Wonderful Life'' File:Kip Thorne at Caltech.jpg, Nobel laureate Kip Thorne, BS 1962, known for his prolific contributions in gravitation physics and astrophysics and co-founding of LIGO File:France A. Córdova official photo.jpg, France A. Córdova, PhD 1978, Astrophysicist and 14th Director of the
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
File:Stephen Wolfram PR.jpg, Stephen Wolfram, PhD 1979, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha; one of the first MacArthur Fellows in 1981 File:Stanislav Smirnov.jpg, Stanislav Smirnov, PhD 1996, 2010 Fields Medal winner for his work on the mathematical foundations of statistical physics, particularly finite lattice models File:Carolyn Porco 01.jpg, Carolyn Porco, PhD 1983, planetary scientist who led the imaging team on the ''Cassini–Huygens, Cassini'' mission in orbit around Saturn File:Eric Betzig.jpg, Nobel laureate Eric Betzig, BS 1983, known for his work on fluorescence microscopy and photoactivated localization microscopy File:DARPA Director Dr regina dugan.jpeg, Regina E. Dugan, PhD 1993, businesswoman and inventor, first female director of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) File:Ardem Patapoutian by C Michel 67.jpg, Ardem Patapoutian, PhD 1996, 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, known for his work in characterizing receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature File:John Francis Clauser (cropped).jpg, John Clauser, BS 1964, 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, known for the CHSH inequality, Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality in quantum physics


Faculty and staff

Richard Feynman Richard Phillips Feynman (; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American theoretical physicist, known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the physics of the superfl ...
was among the most well-known physicists associated with Caltech, having published the ''Feynman Lectures on Physics'', an undergraduate physics text, and popular science texts such as ''Six Easy Pieces#Six Easy Pieces (1994), 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 Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...
, 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. Long-time Caltech President
Robert Andrews Millikan Robert Andrews Millikan (March 22, 1868 – December 19, 1953) was an American experimental physicist honored with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923 for the measurement of the elementary electric charge and for his work on the photoelectric e ...
was the first to calculate the charge of the electron with his well-known oil-drop experiment, while Richard Chace Tolman is remembered for his contributions to cosmology and statistical mechanics. 2004
Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
winner H. David Politzer is a current professor at Caltech, as is astrophysicist and author Kip Thorne and eminent mathematician Barry Simon. Linus Pauling pioneered quantum chemistry and molecular biology, and went on to discover the nature of the chemical bond in 1939. Seismologist Charles Richter, also an alumnus, developed the magnitude scale that bears his name, the Richter magnitude scale for measuring the power of earthquakes. One of the founders of the geochemistry department, Clair Patterson was the first to accurately determine the age of the Earth via lead:uranium ratio in meteorites. In engineering,
Theodore von Kármán Theodore von Kármán ( hu, ( szőllőskislaki) Kármán Tódor ; born Tivadar Mihály Kármán; 11 May 18816 May 1963) was a Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer, and physicist who was active primarily in the fields of aeronaut ...
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. Participants in von Kármán's GALCIT project included Frank Malina, who helped develop the WAC Corporal, which was the first U.S. rocket to reach the edge of space, Jack Parsons (rocket engineer), Jack Parsons, a pioneer in the development of liquid and solid rocket fuels who designed the first castable composite-based rocket motor, and Qian Xuesen, who was dubbed the "Father of Chinese Rocketry". More recently, Michael E. Brown, Michael Brown, a professor of planetary astronomy, discovered many trans-Neptunian objects, most notably the dwarf planet Eris (dwarf planet), Eris, which prompted the International Astronomical Union to redefine the term "planet".
David Baltimore David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technol ...
, the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology, and Alice S. Huang, Alice Huang, Senior Faculty Associate in Biology, served as the presidents of American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS from 2007 to 2008 and 2010 to 2011, respectively. 33% of the faculty are members of the National Academy of Sciences or National Academy of Engineering, 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. The average salary for assistant professors at Caltech is $111,300, associate professors $121,300, and full professors $172,800. Caltech faculty are active in applied physics, astronomy and astrophysics, biology, biochemistry, biological engineering, chemical engineering, computer science, geology, mechanical engineering, and physics.


Presidents

*James Augustin Brown Scherer (1908–1920) (president of Throop College of Technology before the name change) *Robert A. Millikan (1921–1945), experimental physicist, Nobel laureate in physics for 1923 (his official title was "Chairman of the Executive Council") * Lee A. DuBridge (1946–1969), experimental physicist (first to officially hold the title of President) * Harold Brown (1969–1977), physicist and public servant (left Caltech to serve as United States Secretary of Defense in the administration of Jimmy Carter) *Robert F. Christy (1977–1978), astrophysicist (acting president) *Marvin L. Goldberger (1978–1987), theoretical physicist (left to serve as Director of Institute for Advanced Study) *Thomas E. Everhart (1987–1997), experimental physicist *
David Baltimore David Baltimore (born March 7, 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and 1975 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He is President Emeritus and Distinguished Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technol ...
(1997–2006), molecular biologist, Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine for 1975 *Jean-Lou Chameau (2006–2013), civil engineer and educational administrator (left to serve as president of
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST; ar, جامعة الملك عبد الله للعلوم و التقنية ') is a private research university located in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. Founded in 2009, the university provid ...
) * Thomas F. Rosenbaum (2014–), condensed matter physicist and administrator


Caltech startups

Over the years Caltech has actively promoted the commercialization of technologies developed within its walls. Through its Office of Technology Transfer & Corporate Partnerships, scientific breakthroughs have led to the transfer of numerous technologies in a wide variety of scientific-related fields such as photovoltaic, radio-frequency identification (RFID), semiconductors, hyperspectral imaging, electronic devices, protein design, solid state amplifiers and many more. Companies such as Contour Energy Systems, Impinj, Fulcrum Microsystems, Nanosys, Inc., Photon etc., Xencor, and Wavestream Wireless have emerged from Caltech.


In media and popular culture

Caltech has appeared in many works of popular culture, both as itself and in disguised form. On television, it plays a prominent role and is the workplace of all four List of The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon characters#The Big Bang Theory main characters, male lead characters and one female lead character in the sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory''. Caltech is also the inspiration, and frequent film location, for the California Institute of Science in ''Numbers (TV series), Numb3rs''.Caltech References in "Real Genius"
. Retrieved 2007-11-19.
On film, the Pacific Tech of ''The War of the Worlds (1953 film), The War of the Worlds''Cowan, Douglas E.
Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic: Science, Religion, and ''The War of the Worlds''
." ''Journal of Religion and Film'', Vol. 11, No. 1, April 1, 2007.
and ''Real Genius'' is based on Caltech. In nonfiction, two 2007 documentaries examine aspects of Caltech: ''Curious'', its researchers, and ''
Quantum Hoops ''Quantum Hoops'' is a 2007 American documentary film directed by Rick Greenwald, that follows the California Institute of Technology's basketball team—the Caltech Beavers—in their attempts to end a 21-year losing streak during the final week o ...
'', its men's basketball team. Caltech is also prominently featured in many comics and television series by Marvel Entertainment. In Marvel Comics, the university serves as the alma mater of Hulk, Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic, Bill Foster (character), Bill Foster (Black Goliath), and Madman (Marvel Comics), Madman. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Bruno Carrelli (Kamala Khan's best friend and love interest) attends Caltech in the miniseries ''Ms. Marvel (TV series), Ms. Marvel''. Given its Los Angeles-area location, the grounds of the Institute are often host to short scenes in movies and television. The Athenaeum at Caltech, Athenaeum dining club appears in the Beverly Hills Cop (film series), ''Beverly Hills Cop'' series, ''The X-Files (film), The X-Files'', ''True Romance'', and ''The West Wing''.


See also

* Engineering education * US-China University Presidents Roundtable


Notes


References


External links

*
Official athletics website
{{authority control California Institute of Technology, 1891 establishments in California Buildings and structures in Pasadena, California Education in Pasadena, California Educational institutions established in 1891 Engineering universities and colleges in California Private universities and colleges in California San Gabriel Valley Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Science and technology in Greater Los Angeles Technological universities in the United States Universities and colleges in Los Angeles County, California