The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech) is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with a strong emphasis on sciences and engineering. Its primary 124-acre (50 ha) campus is located approximately 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles.
Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the eponymous 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 college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Karman.
Caltech enrolled 951 undergraduate and 1179 graduate students and employed 299 professorial faculty in 2009. The university granted 215 undergraduate degrees, 117 masters degrees, and 193 doctoral degrees in 2009. Despite its historically small size, 31 Caltech alumni and faculty have won the Nobel Prize, 66 have won the National Medal of Science or Technology, and 110 have been elected to the National Academies. Caltech managed $357 million in sponsored research in 2009 and a $1.4 billion endowment.
Undergraduates live in a house system and although student life is governed by a honor code, Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks. The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The men's basketball and soccer teams have had notable streaks losing more than 200 games in a row but Caltech has also fielded competitive women's table tennis and Ultimate club teams.
History
Caltech began as a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, and Throop College of Technology, before acquiring its current name in 1921.
At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904. He joined Throop's board of trustees the same year, 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. The promise of the lab attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes to commit to developing the institution. Arther Fleming, Caltech's primary benefactor, who had donated the land for the permanent campus site at California and Wilson, later donated $100,000 to establish a physics facility, the Norman Bridge Laboratory, which succeeded in attracting experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan to join the faculty and assist in establishing the college as a center for science and technology.
Campus
Caltech's 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located in Pasadena, California, approximately 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is within walking distance of Old Town Pasadena and the Pasadena Playhouse District and therefore the two locations are frequent getaways for Caltech students.
In 1917 Hale hired architect Bertram Goodhue to produce a master plan for the 22 acres (9 ha) campus. Goodhue conceived the overall layout of the campus and designed the physics building, Dabney Hall, and several other structures, in which he sought to be consistent with the local climate, the character of the school, and Hale's educational philosophy. Goodhue's designs for Caltech were also influenced by the traditional Spanish mission architecture of Southern California.
In 1971 a magnitude-6.5 earthquake in San Fernando caused some damage to the Caltech campus. Engineers who evaluated the damage found that two historic buildings dating from the early days of the Institute — Throop Hall and the Goodhue-designed Culbertson Auditorium — had cracked. These were some of the first reinforced concrete buildings, and their plans did not contain enough details (such as how much reinforcing bar had been embedded in the concrete) to be sure they were safe, so the engineers recommended demolition. However, demolishing these historic structures required considerably more effort than would have been necessary had they been in real danger of collapse. A large wrecking ball was used to demolish Throop Hall, and smashing the concrete revealed massive amounts of rebar, far in excess of safety requirements. The rebar had to be cut up before the pieces could be hauled away, and the process took much longer than expected.
In 2008 Caltech completed a 238 kW solar array projected to produce approximately 320,000 kWh in 2009. New additions to the campus include the Cahill Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg 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.