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California Institute of Technology

The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States that are devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences.

The institution was founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891 and began attracting 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 1920. 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 Kármán.

Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in research grants as of 2010. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles, in Pasadena. First-year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus housing system at Caltech. Students agree to abide 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 (SCIAC).

Scientists and engineers at or from the university have played an essential role in many modern scientific breakthroughs and innovations, including advances in space research, sustainability science, quantum physics, and seismology. As of October 2024, there are 80 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with Caltech, making it the institution with the highest number of Nobelists per capita in America. This includes 47 alumni and faculty members (48 prizes, with chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes). In addition, 68 National Medal of Science Recipients, 43 MacArthur Fellows, 15 National Medal of Technology and Innovation recipients, 11 astronauts, 5 Science Advisors to the President, 4 Fields Medalists, and 6 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Caltech.

Caltech started as a vocational school founded in present-day Old Pasadena on Fair Oaks Avenue and Chestnut Street on September 23, 1891, by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. 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 in 1907.

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 in 1907, and soon began developing the university, 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 very capable in administration and fund-raising, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money (equivalent to $900,000 in 2024) to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus.

In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arthur Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. Theodore Roosevelt 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 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.

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