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22 unusual facts about California Institute of Technology


1961 Rose Bowl

As seen by an estimated 30 million television viewers, students from nearby Caltech altered the plans for the Washington card stunts, which spelled "CALTECH" instead of "HUSKIES" and showed the Caltech Beaver mascot instead of the Washington Husky.

84882 Table Mountain

Named for the discoverer's workplace Table Mountain Observatory, currently a NASA facility operated by the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which began operation as a Smithsonian Institution site in 1924.

Alfred Mirsky

During a sabbatical year at the California Institute of Technology, Mirsky published a paper with Linus Pauling on the general theory of protein structure, suggesting that the structure of proteins are coiled in a specific configuration that accounts for the function in the body, and that the protein is denatured when that configuration is lost by breaking the hydrogen bonds that stabilize the structure.

C.S. Venkitaraman

The Theory of Arithmetic Functions was initiated in the thirties by Professors E. T. Bell of the California Institute of Technology and independently by Prof R Vaidyanathaswamy.

Cargo cult programming

Article based on his 1974 Caltech Commencement address, with pictures, as originally published in Engineering and Science, Volume 37:7, June 1974.

Catherine Cesarsky

She graduated with a PhD in Astronomy in 1971 from Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass., USA), and for several years worked at the California Institute of Technology.

Dimitri Mihalas

Dimitri completed his PhD degree in three years in 1963 in Physics and Astronomy, also from California Institute of Technology.

In one year, he received his Master's Degree from California Institute of Technology in 1960.

Donnellan Glacier

The glacier was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 2006 after Andrea Donnellan of the Satellite Geodesy and Geodynamics Systems Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, who was involved from the mid-1990s in research projects involving the use of GPS in studies of earth crustal deformation in Southern California and also in Antarctica.

Francesco Tricomi

From 1943 to 1945 and from 1948 to 1951 at the California Institute of Technology of Pasadena, he collaborated on the manual of special functions for the Bateman manuscript project, together with Arthur Erdélyi, Wilhelm Magnus and Fritz Oberhettinger.

Frank B. Jewett

He graduated from the Throop Institute of Technology (later the California Institute of Technology) in 1898, and received the doctoral degree in physics in 1902 from the University of Chicago (IL).

General-purpose macro processor

It was developed in 1968 by Steven Caine and E. Kent Gordon at the California Institute of Technology.

Gutenberg Glacier

The glacier was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names after German-born seismologist Beno Gutenberg, director of the California Institute of Technology seismology laboratory in the 1930s, and collaborator with Charles F. Richter in developing the Richter Scale, 1935, used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes.

Harvie Andre

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, on July 27, 1940, Andre was educated at the University of Alberta (Chemical ’62, PhD Chemical ’66) and pursued part of his postgraduate studies at the California Institute of Technology before becoming a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Calgary from 1966 to 1972.

James C. Keck

In 1952, after serving as a research associate at Cornell University, Keck left for the California Institute of Technology, where he served as a research fellow until 1955.

Jesse E. Hobson

Hobson received bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Purdue University and a PhD in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Leon W. Johnson

He later received a master of science degree in meteorology from the California Institute of Technology.

Leonard I. Schiff

Schiff was a theoretical physicist who, after completing his doctorate, worked as a research associate for two years at the University of California and the California Institute of Technology.

Marion Jorgensen

The Jorgensens supported the California Institute of Technology, and established the Earle and Marion Jorgensen Scholarship Fund as a means to assist students.

Richard S. Westfall

Westfall taught history at various universities in the 1950s and 1960s: California Institute of Technology (1952–53), State University of Iowa (1953–57), and Grinnell College (1957–63).

Valentine Telegdi

After retiring from ETH he divided his time between CERN and the California Institute of Technology.

York Liao

Born in China and raised in Hong Kong, Liao came to the United States to attend Caltech, where he earned a BS in physics in 1967.


2013 YP139

The data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer was transmitted to the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology, located in Pasadena, California.

73079 Davidbaltimore

The asteroid was named after David Baltimore (b. 1938), renowned for his Nobel Prize-winning biological research and for his vision and leadership as the seventh president of the California Institute of Technology (1997–2006).

Adriaan Cornelis Zaanen

There he started a large research programme into the theory of Riesz spaces, together with his first doctoral student Wim Luxemburg, Professor of Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology.

Anirvan Ghosh

After completing high school at Central School (Kendriya Vidyalaya) IIT Kanpur, he moved to the U.S. in 1981 to pursue his undergraduate education at the California Institute of Technology.

Center for Detectors

Some presenters include Dr. Donald Hall of the University of Hawaii, Dr. Chris Packham of the University of Florida, Dr. Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the University of Sydney, Bruce Tromberg, of the University of California, Irvine, and Dr. Shouleh Nikzad, Dr. Michael Hoenk, and Bedabrata Pain of the California Institute of Technology’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Crankcase ventilation system

In 1952, Professor A. J. Haagen-Smit, of the California Institute of Technology at Pasadena, postulated that unburned hydrocarbons were a primary constituent of smog, and that gasoline powered automobiles were a major source of those hydrocarbons.

CRLX101

It was developed by Mark E. Davis, professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and associates at Insert Therapeutics, Inc., now Calando Pharmaceuticals, Inc., hence the original name "IT-101".

David L. Lambert

In 1967 he became an immigrant to the USA to work at the California Institute of Technology, then in 1969 at the University of Texas at Austin, where in 1974 he became a professor.

Dennis Holt

Holt subsequently attended the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA (where his graduate advisor was William Bright), receiving from the last of these four degrees in Linguistics (B.A. 1972, M.A. 1973, C.Phil. 1975, and Ph.D. 1986).

Frank Spitzer

Spitzer's first academic appointments were at the California Institute of Technology (1953–1958), but most of his academic career was spent at Cornell University, with leaves at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Mittag-Leffler Institute in Sweden.

George R. Rossman

George R. Rossman is the Eleanor and John R. McMillan Professor of Mineralogy at the California Institute of Technology.

Gordon Kaufmann

While gaining recognition for his work on the Scripps campus, he was also hired by California Institute of Technology in 1928 to design the complex of dormitories now known as the South Hovses, and the building for the Athenaeum, a private club located on the school's campus.

Graham Fleming

He spent the next five years as a postdoctoral researcher at three institutions: California Institute of Technology (1974–1975); University of Melbourne (1975–1976); and the Royal Institution in the United Kingdom (1976–1979).

John Brinkerhoff

Brinkerhoff obtained his BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy and received his MS in Civil Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Leonard Herzenberg

In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in biochemistry with a specialization in immunology for studies on cytochrome in Neurospora.

Maurice Anthony Biot

He obtained his Ph.D. in Aeronautical Science from the California Institute of Technology in 1932 under Theodore von Kármán.

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light

From 2008, he was a professor at the Laboratory of Applied Physics and since 2011, a co-director at the Kavli Nanoscience Institute, both located in California Institute of Technology.

Melanie Sanford

She graduated from Yale University with a BS and MS in 1996, having carried out research with Robert H. Crabtree, and from the California Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in 2001, where she studied with Robert H. Grubbs.

Meredith Gourdine

In 1960 he earned a doctorate in engineering from the California Institute of Technology working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from 1958-60.

Molly Dodd

They did various productions – Spoon River Anthology, a concert titled From Our Bag, Pirandello's As You Desire Me, and a double-bill titled Those Mad Victorians, which the company took to Caltech in the late 1960s.

Phytotron

The first phytotron was built under the direction of Frits Warmolt Went at the California Institute of Technology in 1949.

Quantum Hoops

Quantum Hoops is a 2007 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 of the 2006 basketball season.

Redstone Arsenal

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology was an Army research operation at that time, years before NASA.

Tim de Zeeuw

From 1984, he worked in the USA, first as a long-term Member at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, then, from 1988, as a Senior Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Time-evolving block decimation

Guifré Vidal, then at the Institute for Quantum Information, CalTech,

Wade Regehr

Born in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, Canada, Regehr attended the University of Regina in Canada, then received his Ph.D. at Caltech in applied physics with David Rutledge.