Live in USA
The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)5 is
a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States.
Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and
engineering. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi
(18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Although founded as a preparatory
and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted
influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert
Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory
schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present
name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American
Universities, and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which
Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943
under Theodore von K¨¢rm¨¢n.67 The university is one among a small group of
Institutes of Technology in the United States which tends to be primarily
devoted to the instruction of technical arts and applied sciences.
Despite
its small size, 32 Caltech alumni and faculty have won a total of 33 Nobel
Prizes (Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared
prizes) and 70 have won the United States National Medal of Science or
Technology.3 There are 112 faculty members who have been elected to the National
Academies. In addition, numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA.3 Caltech managed $332 million in 2011
in sponsored research and $1.85 billion for its endowment in 2013.28 It also has
a long standing rivalry with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
First year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates
remain in the on-campus house system. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of
practical jokes and pranks,9 student life is governed by an honor code which
allows faculty to assign take-home examinations. The Caltech Beavers compete in
13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California
Intercollegiate Athletic Conference.
Under the leadership of Hale, Noyes and
Millikan (aided by the booming economy of Southern California), Caltech grew to
national prominence in the 1920s and concentrated on the development of
Roosevelt's "Hundredth Man". On November 29, 1921, the trustees declared it to
be the express policy of the Institute to pursue scientific research of the
greatest importance and at the same time "to continue to conduct thorough
courses in engineering and pure science, basing the work of these courses on
exceptionally strong instruction in the fundamental sciences of mathematics,
physics, and chemistry; broadening and enriching the curriculum by a liberal
amount of instruction in such subjects as English, history, and economics; and
vitalizing all the work of the Institute by the infusion in generous measure of
the spirit of research."13 In 1923, Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics. In 1925, the school established a department of geology and hired
William Bennett Munro, then chairman of the division of History, Government, and
Economics at Harvard University, to create a division of humanities and social
sciences at Caltech. In 1928, a division of biology was established under the
leadership of Thomas Hunt Morgan, the most distinguished biologist in the United
States at the time, and discoverer of the role of genes and the chromosome in
heredity. In 1930, Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory was established in Corona del Mar
under the care of Professor George MacGinitie. In 1926, a graduate school of
aeronautics was created, which eventually attracted Theodore von K¨¢rm¨¢n. K¨¢rm¨¢n
later helped create the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and played an integral part
in establishing Caltech as one of the world's centers for rocket science. In
1928, construction of the Palomar Observatory began.
Millikan served as
"Chairman of the Executive Council" (effectively Caltech's president) from 1921
to 1945, and his influence was such that the Institute was occasionally referred
to as "Millikan's School." Millikan initiated a visiting-scholars program soon
after joining Caltech. Scientists who accepted his invitation include luminaries
such as Paul Dirac, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Hendrik Lorentz and
Niels Bohr.17 Albert Einstein arrived on the Caltech campus for the first time
in 1931 to polish up his Theory of General Relativity, and he returned to
Caltech subsequently as a visiting professor in 1932 and 1933.18
During World
War II, Caltech was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took
part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to
a Navy commission.19 The United States Navy also maintained a naval training
school for aeronautical engineering, resident inspectors of ordnance and naval
material, and a liaison officer to the National Defense Research Committee on
campus.
Download