Education: The Purists

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Vocabulary Builder. Since Caltech is dedicated to science and engineering, it is only natural that its laboratories should outnumber classrooms about five to one. And out of these laboratories have come some major revolutions in knowledge. The terms that Caltech has made important —cosmic ray, Badger's rule, alpha helix, Neurospora, positron, meson and mumeson—may not be exactly household words, but they have become standard parts of science's vocabulary.

It was Millikan, the first boss of modern Caltech, who discovered the cosmic ray and first measured the charge of the electron. Nobel Laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan unlocked the mysteries of the chromosome, and Richard Tolman helped prepare the way for the modern theory of chemical-reaction rates. Richard Badger's rule described the relationship between the vibration and size of two-atom molecules. Through his work on the red and yellow pigments of such plants as carrots and tomatoes, Laszlo Zechmeister has determined some of the molecular configurations that are effective precursors of vitamin A.

In Caltech's Seismological Laboratory, such researchers as Hugo Benioff and Beno Gutenberg have explored the crust and core of the earth, and found out as much as any men alive about the nature of seismic waves, earthquakes, aftershock. Physicist C.C. Lauritsen produced the first 1,000,000-volt X-ray tube, and Carl Anderson won a Nobel Prize for discovering the positron. Meanwhile, Caltech biologists have been probing their own areas of the invisible. Geneticist Alfred H. Sturtevant described the linear order of genes; Calvin B. Bridges provided proof for the chromosome theory of heredity. In determining that genes control the synthesis of vitamins and amino acids, George Beadle discovered the bread mold, Neurospora, as an effective research tool. This has sped the progress of genetics a hundredfold, was partly responsible for the successful increased production of penicillin.

The relentless search for knowledge has not only outstripped the senses, it has transgressed both time and space. Geochemist Claire Patterson has pushed back the origin of the earth to 4.5 billion years, and A.E.J. Engel. Heinz Lowenstam and Samuel Epstein described what the earth's temperatures and atmosphere were millennia ago. At the same time, the astronomers have probed millions of light-years farther out in space. Seth B. Nicholson discovered three more satellites to Jupiter; Walter Baade discovered a whole new family of stars.