Becoming Caltech Presentations

Becoming Caltech, 1910–1930: Presentations from the Archives

A century ago, a small institution called Throop Polytechnic Institute dramatically reinvented itself, transforming from a manual arts academy to an engineering school, then expanding into a research institute. In 1920, it became the California Institute of Technology. In summer 2020, Caltech archivists gave a series of livestreamed presentations on the science, engineering, architecture, and community life of early Caltech. You can find below links to video of these presentations, and a bibliography of further reading.

Session 1, Commencement Edition. Thursday, June 11, 5:00–6:15
Watch on YouTube

• “The Greater Throop”: Planning and Building a New Campus

• Influenza Comes to Throop

• The Rise of Seismology

• Commencement and “Hail CIT”

Session 2, Thursday, June 25, 5:00–6:00
Watch on YouTube

• Chemistry Comes to Caltech

• Women at Early Caltech

• Paleontology and the Road Not Taken

Session 3, Thursday, July 9, 5:00–6:00
Watch on YouTube

• Caltech’s Early Architects

• E. T. Bell and Mathematics Between the Wars, by special guest Judith R. Goodstein, University Archivist, Emeritus

• Student Life and the Original Big T, Carved into a Mountain

Session 4, Thursday, July 23, 5:00–6:00
Watch on YouTube

• From High Volts to High Energy Physics

• The Life and Times of Mathematician Olga Taussky-Todd, by special guest Judith R. Goodstein, University Archivist, Emeritus

• Clubs and Sports

Session 5, Thursday, August 6, 5:00–6:00
Watch on YouTube

• Humanities before HSS

• Architectural Elements Saved

• Biology Returns to Caltech 

Session 6, Thursday, August 20, 5:00–6:00
Watch on YouTube

• Caltech Takes to the Air: The Fly Boys and the Science Guys

• The Cosmopolitan Club and Students of Color

• Origins of the Athenaeum

Further Reading

• Garland E. Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science (1978).

• Phillip Balch, “Allan Christopher Balch: Pioneer in the Electric Industry,” Balchipedia: The Encyclopedia of Baltch History, 2017.

• Manton M. Barnes, “Hail CIT” and “In This Issue,” Engineering and Science, November 1948.

• The Big T yearbook.

• Bulletin of the California Institute of Technology.

• Charles L. Burdick, “The Genesis and Beginning of X-Ray Crystallography at Caltech,” in Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction (1962).

• Imra W. Buwalda, “The Roots of the California Institute of Technology III,” Engineering and Science, December 1966.

• California Tech student newspaper.

• Caltech News.

• Central Docents, “Lee Lawrie,” Los Angeles Public Library Blog, January 7, 2015.

• Peter Sachs Collopy and Jennifer Torres-Siders, “‘Throops Superlative Opportunity’: The Story of the Gates Laboratory of Chemistry” (2017).

• Peter Sachs Collopy and Jennifer Torres-Siders, “Building a Chemistry Division” (2017).

• Engineering and Science magazine.

• Horace N. Gilbert, interview by Mary Terrall, 1978, Caltech Archives Oral History Project.

• Judith R. Goodstein, Millikan’s School: A History of the California Institute of Technology (1991).

• Judith R. Goodstein, “Olga Taussky-Todd,” Notices of the American Mathematical Society 67, no. 3 (2020).

• Judith R. Goodstein and Donald Babbitt, “E. T. Bell and Mathematics at Caltech Between the Wars,” Notices of the American Mathematical Society 60, no. 6 (2013).

• Judith R. Goodstein and Alice Stone, Caltech’s Throop Hall (1981).

• Gregory Paul Harm, Lee Lawrie’s Prairie Deco: History in Stone at the Nebraska State Capitol (2011).

• Gregory P. Harm, LeeLawrie.com.

• Abraham Hoffman, “Albert Einstein at Caltech,” California History 76, no. 4 (1997).

• Charles H. Holbrow, “The Giant Cancer Tube and the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory,” Physics Today 34, no. 7 (1981).

• L. Winchester Jones, interview by Mary Terrall, 1978, Caltech Archives Oral History Project.

• Robert Kargon, “Birth Cries of the Elements: Theory and Experiment along Millikan’s Route to Cosmic Rays,” in The Analytic Spirit: Essays in the History of Science in Honor of Henry Guerlac (1981).

• Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech: The Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (1993).

• Katherine Keenan, “Lilian Vaughan Morgan (1870–1952): Her Life and Work,” American Zoologist 23 (1983).

• Robert E. Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (1994).

• Mayo Hayes O'Donnell Library, “Janet Jacks.”

• Ellior Meyerowitz, “History of the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering” (2020).

• National Academy of Science, The National Academy of Science Building: A Home for Science in America (2013).

• J. Alex Navarro and Howard Markel, editors, The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918–1919: A Digital Encyclopedia (2016).

• Linus Pauling, “Early Work on X-Ray Diffraction in the California Institute of Technology,” in Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction (1962).

• Stefanos Polyzoides, “Bertram Goodhue and the Architecture of Caltech, 1915 to 1939,” Classicist no. 15 (2018).

• Constance Reid, The Search for E. T. Bell, Also Known as John Taine (1993).

• Charles Richter, interview by Ann Scheid, 1978, Caltech Archives Oral History Project.

• John D. Roberts, interview by Rachel Prud’homme, 1985, Caltech Archives Oral History Project.

• Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s (1990).

• Throop College Bulletin.

• Robert Winter and David Gebhard, An Architectural Guidebook to Los Angeles (2003).

• Romy Wyllie, Caltech’s Architectural Heritage: From Spanish Tile to Modern Stone (2000).