cover image Millikan's School: A History of the California Institute of Technology

Millikan's School: A History of the California Institute of Technology

Judith R. Goodstein. W. W. Norton & Company, $25 (317pp) ISBN 978-0-393-03017-4

Caltech, one of American's premier science institutions, has now completed a distinguished century of education. Named the Throop College of Technology until l920, the Southern California school drew distinguished physicist Robert Millikan from the University of Chicago in 1921. A contemporary of such figures as astrophysicist George Hale and biochemist Arthur Noyes, Millikan, who won a Nobel Prize in 1923, shaped and led the institution until his retirement in 1945. Goodstein, Caltech archivist, commemorates the centennial in terms of the personalities of scientists and administrators, including chemist Linus Pauling, aeronautical designer Donald Douglas and biologist Thomas Hunt Morgan, who influenced Caltech's rise and maturity in such disciplines as engineering and aeronautics, geology and physics. The institution also encompasses the Jet Propulsion Lab, the Wilson Observatory and the Van DeGraaff Accelerator. While dryly presented, this chronicle offers glimpses of the passion and drive that have motivated a roster of distinguished scientists. (Oct.)