The California Institute of Technology was founded in 1891 in Pasadena, California, as Throop University, a vocational and preparatory school. It underwent several name changes and shifted focus to advanced science and engineering research in the early twentieth century under leaders including George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes, and Robert Andrews Millikan. The institute adopted its current name in 1920, established the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1930s and 1940s which it has managed for NASA since 1958, contributed to wartime research during World War II, and developed major facilities such as observatories while maintaining emphasis on fundamental scientific research and education.
Caltech's primary campus covers 124 acres in Pasadena, California, about eleven miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, with a planned layout designed by architect Bertram Goodhue in 1917 featuring Spanish mission-style architecture and open courtyards. The campus includes research facilities such as the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, the Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology, and the Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, along with residential houses and athletic fields. Additional affiliated sites include the Palomar Observatory, the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in nearby La Cañada Flintridge.
Caltech is governed by a Board of Trustees of approximately forty-six members who hold responsibility for institutional policy, finances, and oversight as a private nonprofit corporation. The current president is Thomas F. Rosenbaum, who has served since 2014 with retirement scheduled for June 30, 2026. The institute operates with significant autonomy, supported by an endowment valued at over four point seven billion dollars as of recent reports, and maintains a contract to manage NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Caltech is organized into six academic divisions covering biology and biological engineering, chemistry and chemical engineering, engineering and applied science, geological and planetary sciences, humanities and social sciences, and physics, mathematics, and astronomy. It offers undergraduate majors in twenty-eight fields and graduate programs primarily at the doctoral level, with a core curriculum emphasizing mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and humanities in the first two years along with extensive research opportunities. The institute is classified as a high-research-activity institution, manages major facilities including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and is affiliated with forty-eight Nobel laureates as of October 2025, with consistent rankings among the top universities worldwide in science and engineering fields.
Caltech enrolls approximately two thousand four hundred and thirty students, including around nine hundred and eighty-seven undergraduates and one thousand four hundred and forty-three graduate students. First-year students are required to live on campus, and about ninety-five percent of undergraduates remain in the residential house system of eight houses plus Bechtel Residence, which provides meals, social activities, and community governance. Student life operates under an honor code that prohibits taking unfair advantage of others, supporting practices such as take-home examinations without proctoring, along with traditions including pranks, Ditch Day, pumpkin drops on Halloween, and NCAA Division III intercollegiate athletics, in a culture centered on intense academics, collaboration, and research involvement.
Professors at California Institute of Technology
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