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In November 1891, wealthy former abolitionist and Chicago politician Amos Throop founded a thoroughly undistinguished small college in Pasadena, California, which he named after himself. Millikan’s School is the history of this institution that stands today at the pinnacle of world academics, with 300 full-time faculty, nearly 1,000 undergraduate, 1,250 graduate students and 39 Caltech and alumni Nobel Prize recipients. Although Amos Throop — the name of the college was changed to Caltech in 1920 — could not have realized the importance of geography, the fact that Pasadena lay at the foot of Mount Wilson, was central to its success: astronomer George Ellery Hale built his telescope there in 1902, the finest at that time in the world. Later Hale joined the board of trustees of the struggling school and persuaded Arthur Amos Noyes, former president of MIT and the nation’s leading physical chemist, to join him in Pasadena. The third member of Caltech’s founding troika was renowned physicist Robert A. Millikan from the University of Chicago. The dedication of Caltech in 1920 and the proclamation of what it stood for in science and education set the stage for Millikan, who functioned as the school’s president, to bring the best and the brightest from all over the world — Theodore von Kármán in aeronautics, Thomas Hunt Morgan in biology, Paul Sophus Epstein in physics, Beno Gutenberg in seismology, Linus Pauling in chemistry — to Pasadena to work in an ever larger number of areas in science and technology. The book also covers the funding, planning and construction of the 200-inch telescope on Palomar Mountain, Willy Fowler’s work in nuclear astrophysics and the wartime rocket experiments that grew into the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), today the world leader in deep-space exploration. “Millikan’s School presents an interesting and thoroughly reliable account of the astonishing change over a period of a few years of a small technical school in Pasadena, California, into one of the world’s leading scientific institutions. “ — Linus Pauling “In Millikan’s School, Judith Goodstein tells the remarkable story of the rise of Caltech... She details how Millikan, aided by Hale and Arthur Amos Noyes, America’s leading physical chemist and another of Hale’s inspired acquisitions, took a former trade school and forged from it a ‘grandiose university among the orange groves’... It would be impossible, while reading Goodstein’s lively account, not to be impressed by the energy, drive and boundless enthusiasm of men like Millikan, Hale and Noyes... [who] had the bare-faced audacity to set about building an institute to rival the cream of the universities of Europe and America.” — Marcus Chown, New Scientist “[Goodstein’s] story is first and foremost the tale of three men: the astronomer George Ellery Hale, the chemist Alfred Noyes, and the physicist Robert Millikan. It is the story of their attempts to transform an undistinguished little school founded in 1891... into a world-class scientific establishment... [A] useful book.” — Tony Rothman, Science “In Millikan’s School, the story of Throop [University]’s transformation into Caltech is told with precision... Judith Goodstein’s history offers a quick tour of the landmarks of science in the mid-20th Century and a glance at how pure science puts itself at the service of government, commerce and the military... Goodstein... approaches her subject with a healthy sense of humor and an acute sense of academic politics. She tells a wonderful story about how Caltech lost to Princeton in a bidding war over the services of Albert Einstein, for example... To her credit, Goodstein asks the hard question: ‘What is the best way to do science?’... Millikan’s School offers enough hard data to enable us to come to our own conclusions.” — Jonathan Kirsch, Los Angeles Times “A cleanly written, scientifically well informed account of one of the world’s foremost institutions for science and technology.” — Ed Regis, Nature “Relying on archival material, published secondary sources, and interviews with institute scientists, Goodstein presents a highly readable account of Caltech’s beginnings at the turn of the century... substantive, informative, and a good read.” — Rebecca S. Lowen, Technology and Culture “As a history of science, this book is well crafted. Orderly in its flow, it is not only a tribute to Millikan, but also places him within the development of physics as a field.” — Andrew Rolle, Southern California Quarterly “A fascinating history that speaks to issues far larger than Cal Tech itself... This well-written and honest account (witness the many cited instances of anti-Semitism in the scientific world) is both a good read and a sobering reminder that big science and top schools are not brought by storks.” — Carroll Pursell, History of Education Quarterly “The author focuses on the personalities and the research fields of the principal scientific figures... The [...] emphasis on personalities, and capsule surveys of relevant scientific fields produce a book that can be apprehended by a wide audience.” — Roger Geiger, Isis “This chronicle offers glimpses of the passion and drive that have motivated a roster of distinguished scientists.” — Publishers Weekly “A lively tale... [Goodstein’s] individual profiles are lean and candid; her background on subjects as diverse as nuclear astrophysics, seismology, aeronautical design, quantum mechanics and rocket fuel are crisp and understandable... With a light style... and meticulous documentation, Goodstein has produced a tale worthy of her subject... “ — Marshall Robinson, Foundation News “A distinguished and uniquely American institution has found its chronicler and its chronicle in Judith Goodstein’s thorough but compact story of Millikan ‘s School. The emergence of Caltech as a powerhouse of science and engineering and a makeweight in the technological advancement of 20th century industry is both beautifully and reliably presented.” — Harry Woolf, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
The American WestÑwhere such landmarks as the Golden Gate Bridge rival wild landscapes in popularity and iconic significanceÑhas been viewed as a frontier of technological innovation. Where Minds and Matters Meet calls attention to the convergence of Western history and the history of technology, showing that the regionÕs politics and culture have shaped seemingly placeless, global technological practices and institutions. Drawing on political and social history as well as art history, the bookÕs essays take the cultural measure of the regionÕs great technological milestones, including San DiegoÕs Panama-California Exposition, the building of the Hetch Hetchy Dam in the Sierras, and traffic planning in Los Angeles. Contributors: Amy Bix, Louise Nelson Dyble, Patrick McCray, Linda Nash, Peter Neushul, Matthew W. Roth, Bruce Sinclair, L. Chase Smith, Carlene Stephens, Aristotle Tympas, Jason Weems, Peter Westwick, Stephanie Young
How radio astronomers challenged national borders, disciplinary boundaries, and the constraints of vision to create an international scientific community. For more than three thousand years, the science of astronomy depended on visible light. In just the last sixty years, radio technology has fundamentally altered how astronomers see the universe. Combining the wartime innovation of radar and the established standards of traditional optical telescopes, the “radio telescope” offered humanity a new vision of the universe. In A Single Sky, the historian David Munns explains how the idea of the radio telescope emerged from a new scientific community uniting the power of radio with the international aspirations of the discipline of astronomy. The radio astronomers challenged Cold War era rivalries by forging a united scientific community looking at a single sky. Munns tells the interconnecting stories of Australian, British, Dutch, and American radio astronomers, all seeking to learn how to see the universe by means of radio. Jointly, this international array of radio astronomers built a new “community” style of science opposing the “glamour” of nuclear physics. A Single Sky describes a communitarian style of science, a culture of interdisciplinary and international integration and cooperation, and counters the notion that recent science has been driven by competition. Collaboration, or what a prominent radio astronomer called “a blending of radio invention and astronomical insight,” produced a science as revolutionary as Galileo's first observations with a telescope. Working together, the community of radio astronomers revealed the structure of the galaxy.
This book details the lives of two married geniuses, Aden and Marjorie Meinel, who helped to pioneer modern optics and solar energy in the U.S. Aden B. Meinel and Marjorie P. Meinel stood at the confluence of several overarching technological developments during their lifetimes, including postwar aerial surveillance by spy planes and satellites, solar energy, the evolution of telescope design, interdisciplinary optics, and photonics. Yet, their incredible stories and their long list of scientific contributions have never been adequately recognized in one place. In this book, James Breckinridge and Alec M. Pridgeon correct this oversight by sharing the story of this powerful duo. The book follows their lives and covers large scientific developments between World War II to the Cold War. James B. Breckinridge, a previous advisee and later colleague to the Meinels, and historian and scientist Alec M. Pridgeon collected more than 200 hours of oral interviews with those who worked closely with the Meinels and some who built their careers around the findings made possible by their work. The book shares and analyzes the work done by the Meinels, and it also includes incredible insights from an unpublished Meinel autobiography.
Promising an end to global hunger and political instability, huge climate-controlled laboratories known as phytotrons spread around the world to thirty countries after the Second World War. The United States built nearly a dozen, including the first at Caltech in 1949. Made possible by computers and other novel greenhouse technologies of the early Cold War, phytotrons enabled plant scientists to experiment on the environmental causes of growth and development of living organisms. Subsequently, they turned biologists into technologists who, in their pursuit of knowledge about plants, also set out to master the machines that controlled their environment. Engineering the Environment tells the forgotten story of a research program that revealed the shape of the environment, the limits of growth and development, and the limits of human control over complex technological systems. As support and funding for basic science dwindled in the mid-1960s, phytotrons declined and ultimately disappeared—until, nearly thirty years later, the British built the Ecotron to study the impact of climate change on biological communities. By revisiting this history of phytotrons, David Munns reminds us of the vital role they can play in helping researchers unravel the complexities of natural ecosystems in the Anthropocene.
The Chester Stock Papers at the Archives of the California Institute of Technology were assembled from different sources. The first series represents documents that were given to or simply remained at Caltech in the period following Stock's death in 1950. They reach back to his early teaching years at Berkeley. Series 2 and 3 encompass Stock's years at Caltech. Series 2, covering 1927-1951, was transfered to the Caltech Archives by the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum in 1981. Series 3, which consists of papers which remained at Caltech, runs chronologically parallel to Series 2. Some correspondents will be found in more than one of these three series. Finally, Series 4 reverts to an earlier time. Most of the field notebooks in this section have a clear association with Berkeley. Not all of them were created by Stock himself but were apparently bequeathed to him by colleagues who preceded him in the field. Readers will be aware of gaps in the records, which arise from the piecemeal way in which the papers were preserved. Finally, Box 8 contains copies of the field notebooks in Box 7, made for preservation and study purposes.