Articles tagged with "Caltech_history"

04/25/2013 10:37:00
Fifty Years of Clearing the Skies
Douglas Smith
Ringed by mountains and capped by a temperature inversion that traps bad air, Los Angeles has had bouts of smog since the turn of the 20th century. An outbreak in 1903 rendered the skies so dark that many people mistook it for a solar eclipse. Angelenos might now be living in a state of perpetual midnight—assuming we could live here at all—were it not for the work of Caltech Professor of Bio-organic Chemistry Arie Jan Haagen-Smit. How he did it is told here largely in his own words, excerpted from Caltech's Engineering & Science magazine between 1950 and 1962. (See "Related Links" for the original articles.)
09/07/2012 07:00:00
Whatever Happened to the Space Simulator at JPL?
Douglas Smith

You could call it the Ultimate Evil Tanning Bed—a stainless-steel torture chamber 47 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter that's expressly designed to deliver a fatal sunburn, if at all possible, to anything placed within.

09/05/2012 07:00:00
Happy 35th Birthday, Voyager!
Kimm Fesenmaier

Today, September 5, marks the 35th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 1, which lifted off in 1977 on a Titan III–Centaur launch system just 16 days after its twin, Voyager 2. Now 11 billion and 9 billion miles from the sun, respectively, the spacecraft are the farthest-flung man-made objects, traveling every 100 days a distance equal to that between sun and Earth.

03/29/2012 07:00:00
Einstein's Archive Now Available Online
Marcus Woo

If you ever wanted to glimpse into Albert Einstein's thoughts, now you can. Last week, the complete catalog of about 80,000 documents written by or addressed to Einstein—letters, postcards, notebooks, and other papers—was made available online by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Einstein Papers Project (EPP) at Caltech.

05/09/2011 07:00:00
New Display Showcases Historic Awards Won By Caltech Researchers
Katie Neith

The top floor of Parsons-Gates is shining a bit brighter lately. Some of Caltech's most important accolades—including numerous medals—are currently on display there thanks to the "Olympians of Science" exhibit, a presentation of awards that have been won by Caltech engineers and scientists over the past 110 years.

 

12/22/2010 08:00:00
Caltech Archives Passes Milestone
Kathy Svitil

In December, the Caltech Archives' Oral Histories Online project passed a major milestone, adding the 100th—and, subsequently, the 101st and 102nd—interviews to a (now-digital) archive begun more than 30 years ago for the purpose of recording the personal memoirs of the distinguished scientists, teachers, and administrators of the Institute.

04/25/2007 07:00:00
Romy Wyllie, Expert on Caltech's Architectural Heritage, Writes Book on Bertram Goodhue
Robert Tindol
Visitors to the California Institute of Technology often compliment the architecture, the landscaping, and the general layout of the Pasadena campus. Much of the credit must go to the architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, who was responsible for the original master plan as well as several early campus buildings.
 
04/04/2006 07:00:00
Caltech Unveils New Virtual Exhibit for Historical Earthquake Archives
Deborah Williams-Hedges
April 18 marks the centennial of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In commemoration of that event and the landmark developments that followed it, the California Institute of Technology Archives is presenting a new digital exhibit, Documenting Earthquakes: A Virtual Exhibit in Six Parts. This online display, for use by the public, media, and educators, can be viewed at http://archives.caltech.edu/exhibits/earthquake/index.html.
 
05/04/2005 07:00:00
Caltech Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman Honored on 2005 U.S. Commemorative Stamp
Deborah Williams-Hedges
Widely regarded as one of the most influential physicists of the 20th Century, Nobel laureate and Caltech professor Richard P. Feynman will be honored on a 2005 U.S. postage commemorative stamp. The stamp will be unveiled locally at a celebration on Friday, May 20, at 5 p.m. in Ramo Auditorium on the California Institute of Technology campus. The public is invited to attend this free event. Caltech will offer a limited-edition special commemorative envelope bearing the four stamps that compose the American Scientists series, and a special cancellation stamp from the Feynman Station at Caltech. Stamps and cachets, as well as Feynman books and memorabilia, will be available for purchase.
 
04/19/2005 07:00:00
Campus Weather Station to Be Dedicated to the Late Caltech Nobel Laureate Ed Lewis
Robert Tindol
The famed geneticist Ed Lewis won his Nobel Prize for his breakthroughs in understanding how genes relate to embryonic development. But for four years in World War II, he served as a U.S. Army meteorologist.
 
03/09/2005 08:00:00
First of Four Einstein Centennial Lecturesto Be Presented March 17 at Caltech
In 1905, Albert Einstein single-handedly formulated the theory of special relativity, demonstrated that light traveling in discrete units is responsible for the photoelectric effect, and calculated how microscopic collisions could account for the phenomenon known as Brownian motion. Any one of the three discoveries would have assured his enduring fame as a physicist.
 
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