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111-504: Murray Gell-Mann ( / ˈ m ʌr i ˈ ɡ ɛ l ˈ m æ n / ; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American theoretical physicist who played a preeminent role in the development of the theory of elementary particles . Gell-Mann introduced the concept of quarks as the fundamental building blocks of the strongly interacting particles, and the renormalization group as a foundational element of quantum field theory and statistical mechanics . He played key roles in developing

222-435: A mathematical theory , in the sense that the word "theory" has a different meaning in mathematical terms. R i c = k g {\displaystyle \mathrm {Ric} =kg} The equations for an Einstein manifold , used in general relativity to describe the curvature of spacetime A physical theory involves one or more relationships between various measurable quantities. Archimedes realized that

333-569: A working hypothesis . California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech ) is a private research university in Pasadena, California , United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States that are devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences. The institution

444-533: A Pass/Fail basis. There is little competition; collaboration on homework is encouraged and the honor system encourages take-home tests and flexible homework schedules. Caltech offers co-operative programs with other schools, such as the Pasadena Art Center College of Design and Occidental College . According to a 2018 PayScale study, Caltech graduates earn a median early career salary of $ 83,400 and $ 143,100 mid-career, placing them in

555-540: A Yang-Mills theory of "quark color," and coined the term quantum chromodynamics (QCD) as the gauge theory of the strong interaction. The quark model is a part of QCD, and it has been robust enough to accommodate in a natural fashion the discovery of new " flavors " of quarks, which has superseded the eightfold way scheme. Gell-Mann was responsible, with Pierre Ramond and Richard Slansky , and independently of Peter Minkowski , Rabindra Mohapatra , Goran Senjanović , Sheldon Glashow , and Tsutomu Yanagida, for proposing

666-579: A bachelor's degree in physics in 1948 and intended to pursue graduate studies in physics. He sought to remain in the Ivy League for his graduate education and applied to Princeton University as well as Harvard University . He was rejected by Princeton and accepted by Harvard, but the latter institution was unable to offer him needed financial assistance. He was accepted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and received

777-404: A certain economy and elegance (compare to mathematical beauty ), a notion sometimes called " Occam's razor " after the 13th-century English philosopher William of Occam (or Ockham), in which the simpler of two theories that describe the same matter just as adequately is preferred (but conceptual simplicity may mean mathematical complexity). They are also more likely to be accepted if they connect

888-624: A collaboration between the Naval Ordnance Test Station and the Manhattan Project. Caltech scientists worked on a variety of assignments, including B-29 airdrop tests of model atomic bombs and the manufacturing of explosives for use in the atomic bomb’s implosion mechanism. Additionally, the Salt Wells Pilot Plant at Inyokern was developed with Caltech scientists in response to concerns about

999-531: A division of biology was established under the leadership of Thomas Hunt Morgan , the most distinguished biologist in the United States at the time, and discoverer of the role of genes and the chromosome in heredity. In 1930, Kerckhoff Marine Laboratory was established in Corona del Mar under the care of Professor George MacGinitie . In 1926, a graduate school of aeronautics was created, which eventually attracted Theodore von Kármán . Kármán later helped create

1110-500: A form of protoscience and others are a form of pseudoscience . The falsification of the original theory sometimes leads to reformulation of the theory. "Thought" experiments are situations created in one's mind, asking a question akin to "suppose you are in this situation, assuming such is true, what would follow?". They are usually created to investigate phenomena that are not readily experienced in every-day situations. Famous examples of such thought experiments are Schrödinger's cat ,

1221-766: A good example. For instance: " phenomenologists " might employ ( semi- ) empirical formulas and heuristics to agree with experimental results, often without deep physical understanding . "Modelers" (also called "model-builders") often appear much like phenomenologists, but try to model speculative theories that have certain desirable features (rather than on experimental data), or apply the techniques of mathematical modeling to physics problems. Some attempt to create approximate theories, called effective theories , because fully developed theories may be regarded as unsolvable or too complicated . Other theorists may try to unify , formalise, reinterpret or generalise extant theories, or create completely new ones altogether. Sometimes

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1332-537: A heavy load, and registrations above 51 units require an overload petition. Approximately 20 percent of students double-major. This is achievable since the humanities and social sciences majors have been designed to be done in conjunction with a science major. Although choosing two options in the same division is discouraged, it is still possible. First-year students are enrolled in first-term classes based upon results of placement exams in math, physics, chemistry, and writing and take all classes in their first two terms on

1443-583: A letter from Victor Weisskopf urging him to attend MIT and become Weisskopf's research assistant. This would provide Gell-Mann with the financial assistance he required. Unaware of MIT's eminent status in physics research, Gell-Mann was "miserable" with the fact that he would not be able to attend Princeton or Harvard and in characteristic dark irony, said he considered suicide. Gell-Mann stated that he realized he could try to first enter MIT and commit suicide afterwards if he found it to be truly terrible. However, he couldn't first choose suicide and then attend MIT;

1554-439: A master plan for the 22 acres (8.9 ha) campus. Goodhue conceived the overall layout of the campus and designed the physics building, Dabney Hall, and several other structures, in which he sought to be consistent with the local climate, the character of the school, and Hale's educational philosophy. Goodhue's designs for Caltech were also influenced by the traditional Spanish mission architecture of Southern California. During

1665-559: A method of systematically exploiting symmetries to extract predictions from quark models, in the absence of reliable dynamical theory. This method led to model-independent sum rules confirmed by experiment, and provided starting points underpinning the development of the Standard Model (SM), the widely accepted theory of elementary particles. In 1972 Gell-Mann, while on sabbatical leave to CERN, together with Harald Fritzsch , Heinrich Leutwyler and William A. Bardeen , considered

1776-498: A new branch of mathematics: infinite, orthogonal series . Modern theoretical physics attempts to unify theories and explain phenomena in further attempts to understand the Universe , from the cosmological to the elementary particle scale. Where experimentation cannot be done, theoretical physics still tries to advance through the use of mathematical models. Mainstream theories (sometimes referred to as central theories ) are

1887-466: A novel classification scheme, in 1961, for hadrons . A similar scheme had been independently proposed by Yuval Ne'eman , and has come to be explained by the quark model. Gell-Mann referred to the scheme as the eightfold way , because of the octets of particles in the classification (the term is a reference to the Eightfold Path of Buddhism ). Gell-Mann, along with Maurice Lévy, developed

1998-609: A nuclear research facility in Switzerland, among others as a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellow in 1972. In 1984 Gell-Mann was one of several co-founders of the Santa Fe Institute —a non-profit theoretical research institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico intended to study various aspects of a complex system and disseminate the notion of a separate interdisciplinary study of complexity theory. He wrote

2109-576: A popular science book about physics and complexity science, The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and the Complex (1994). The title of the book is taken from a line of a poem by Arthur Sze : "The world of the quark has everything to do with a jaguar circling in the night". The author George Johnson has written a biography of Gell-Mann, Strange Beauty: Murray Gell-Mann, and

2220-498: A ship floats by displacing its mass of water, Pythagoras understood the relation between the length of a vibrating string and the musical tone it produces. Other examples include entropy as a measure of the uncertainty regarding the positions and motions of unseen particles and the quantum mechanical idea that ( action and) energy are not continuously variable. Theoretical physics consists of several different approaches. In this regard, theoretical particle physics forms

2331-601: A sign on the library bearing the simple phrase " Impeach Nixon ". The following week, Ross McCollum, president of the National Oil Company, wrote an open letter to Dabney House stating that in light of their actions he had decided not to donate one million dollars to Caltech. The Dabney family, being Republicans, disowned Dabney House after hearing of the protest. Since 2000, the Einstein Papers Project has been located at Caltech. The project

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2442-450: A son. Margaret died in 1981, and in 1992 he married Marcia Southwick , whose son became his stepson. In 2011, Gell-Mann attended an event on Jeffrey Epstein 's private island, Little Saint James , known as the "Mindshift Conference", hosted by Epstein and Al Seckel . Gell-Mann's extensive interests outside of physics included archaeology , numismatics , birdwatching and linguistics . Along with S. A. Starostin , he established

2553-572: A striking illustration of one way in which the Research Council can secure co-operation and advance scientific investigation. This institution, with its able investigators and excellent research laboratories, could be of great service in any broad scheme of cooperation. President Scherer, hearing of the formation of the council, immediately offered to take part in its work, and with this object, he secured within three days an additional research endowment of one hundred thousand dollars. Through

2664-556: A visiting-scholars program soon after joining Caltech. Notable scientists who accepted his invitation include Paul Dirac , Erwin Schrödinger , Werner Heisenberg , Hendrik Lorentz and Niels Bohr . Albert Einstein arrived on the Caltech campus for the first time in 1931 to polish up his Theory of General Relativity , and he returned to Caltech subsequently as a visiting professor in 1932 and 1933. During World War II, Caltech

2775-469: A wide range of phenomena. Testing the consequences of a theory is part of the scientific method . Physical theories can be grouped into three categories: mainstream theories , proposed theories and fringe theories . Theoretical physics began at least 2,300 years ago, under the Pre-socratic philosophy , and continued by Plato and Aristotle , whose views held sway for a millennium. During

2886-497: Is a model of physical events. It is judged by the extent to which its predictions agree with empirical observations. The quality of a physical theory is also judged on its ability to make new predictions which can be verified by new observations. A physical theory differs from a mathematical theorem in that while both are based on some form of axioms , judgment of mathematical applicability is not based on agreement with any experimental results. A physical theory similarly differs from

2997-491: Is governed by a permanent trustee committee and administered by an investment office. The institute is organized into six primary academic divisions: Biology and Biological Engineering (founded 1927), Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (founded 1926), Engineering and Applied Science (founded 1926), Geological and Planetary Sciences (founded 1927), Humanities and Social Sciences (founded 1926), Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy (founded 1926). Given Caltech's historical prestige and

3108-605: Is the largest ever for environmental sustainability research and the second-largest private donation to a US academic institution (after Bloomberg's gift of $ 1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins University in 2018). On account of President Robert A. Millikan's affiliation with the Human Betterment Foundation , in January 2021, the Caltech Board of Trustees authorized the removal of Millikan's name (and

3219-567: The California Legislature calling for the establishment of a publicly funded "California Institute of Technology," with an initial budget of a million dollars, ten times the budget of Throop at the time. The board of trustees offered to turn Throop over to the state, but the presidents of Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley successfully lobbied to defeat the bill, which allowed Throop to develop as

3330-571: The Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School aged 14 and subsequently entered Yale College as a member of Jonathan Edwards College . At Yale, he participated in the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition and was on the team representing Yale University (along with Murray Gerstenhaber and Henry O. Pollak ) that won the second prize in 1947. Gell-Mann graduated from Yale with

3441-539: The EPR thought experiment , simple illustrations of time dilation , and so on. These usually lead to real experiments designed to verify that the conclusion (and therefore the assumptions) of the thought experiments are correct. The EPR thought experiment led to the Bell inequalities , which were then tested to various degrees of rigor , leading to the acceptance of the current formulation of quantum mechanics and probabilism as

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3552-711: The Evolution of Human Languages project at the Santa Fe Institute . As a humanist and an agnostic , Gell-Mann was a Humanist Laureate in the International Academy of Humanism . Novelist Cormac McCarthy saw Gell-Mann as a polymath who "knew more things about more things than anyone I've ever met...losing Murray is like losing the Encyclopædia Britannica ." Gell-Mann died on May 24, 2019, at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Gell-Mann

3663-714: The Fat Man implosion bomb, crucial to the Trinity Test and the subsequent bombing of Nagasaki . Lauritsen’s team at Caltech developed detonators that would later be used in atomic bombs. In November 1943, Caltech and the U.S. Navy established the Naval Ordnance Test Station (NOTS) in Inyokern, California , near the Mojave Desert to work on aircraft ordnance and rocket development. One of

3774-491: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) owned by NASA and operated as a division of Caltech through a contract between NASA and Caltech. In 2008, JPL spent over $ 1.6 billion on research and development and employed over 5,000 project-related and support employees. The JPL Director also serves as a Caltech Vice President and is responsible to

3885-713: The National Research Council to coordinate and support scientific work on military problems. While he supported the idea of federal appropriations for science, he took exception to a federal bill that would have funded engineering research at land-grant colleges, and instead sought to raise a $ 1 million national research fund entirely from private sources. To that end, as Hale wrote in The New York Times : Throop College of Technology, in Pasadena California has recently afforded

3996-572: The Scientific Revolution gathered pace, the concepts of matter , energy, space, time and causality slowly began to acquire the form we know today, and other sciences spun off from the rubric of natural philosophy . Thus began the modern era of theory with the Copernican paradigm shift in astronomy, soon followed by Johannes Kepler 's expressions for planetary orbits, which summarized the meticulous observations of Tycho Brahe ;

4107-519: The seesaw theory of neutrino masses . This produces masses at the large scale in any theory with a right-handed neutrino. He is also known to have played a role in keeping string theory alive through the 1970s and early 1980s, supporting that line of research at a time when it was a topic of niche interest. Gell-Mann was a proponent of the consistent histories approach to understanding quantum mechanics, which he advocated in papers with James Hartle . Gell-Mann won numerous awards and honours including

4218-419: The sigma model of pions , which describes low-energy pion interactions. In 1964, Gell-Mann and, independently, George Zweig went on to postulate the existence of quarks , particles which make up the hadrons of this scheme. The name "quark" was coined by Gell-Mann, and is a reference to the novel Finnegans Wake , by James Joyce ("Three quarks for Muster Mark!" book 2, episode 4). Zweig had referred to

4329-461: The two-fluid theory of electricity are two cases in this point. However, an exception to all the above is the wave–particle duality , a theory combining aspects of different, opposing models via the Bohr complementarity principle . Physical theories become accepted if they are able to make correct predictions and no (or few) incorrect ones. The theory should have, at least as a secondary objective,

4440-426: The violation of parity by Chien-Shiung Wu , as suggested theoretically by Chen-Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee . Gell-Mann's work in the 1950s involved recently discovered cosmic ray particles that came to be called kaons and hyperons . Classifying these particles led him to propose that a quantum number , called strangeness , would be conserved by the strong and the electromagnetic interactions, but not by

4551-516: The 1960s, Caltech underwent considerable expansion, in part due to the philanthropy of alumnus Arnold O. Beckman . In 1953, Beckman was asked to join the Caltech Board of Trustees. In 1964, he became its chairman. Over the next few years, as Caltech's president emeritus David Baltimore describes it, Arnold Beckman and his wife Mabel "shaped the destiny of Caltech". In 1971 a magnitude-6.6 earthquake in San Fernando caused some damage to

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4662-675: The 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. Gell-Mann was born in Lower Manhattan to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire , specifically from Czernowitz in present-day Ukraine . His parents were Pauline (née Reichstein) and Arthur Isidore Gelman, who taught English as a second language . Propelled by an intense boyhood curiosity and love for nature and mathematics, he graduated valedictorian from

4773-429: The 19th century. Another important event in the 19th century was the discovery of electromagnetic theory , unifying the previously separate phenomena of electricity, magnetism and light. The pillars of modern physics , and perhaps the most revolutionary theories in the history of physics, have been relativity theory and quantum mechanics . Newtonian mechanics was subsumed under special relativity and Newton's gravity

4884-626: The 2021–2022 school year was $ 56,394 and total annual costs were estimated to be $ 79,947 excluding the Caltech Student Health Insurance Plan. In 2012–2013, Caltech awarded $ 17.1 million in need-based aid, $ 438k in non-need-based aid, and $ 2.51 million in self-help support to enrolled undergraduate students. The average financial aid package of all students eligible for aid was $ 38,756 and students graduated with an average debt of $ 15,090. The full-time, four-year undergraduate program emphasizes instruction in

4995-671: The Caltech campus. Engineers who evaluated the damage found that two historic buildings dating from the early days of the Institute—Throop Hall and the Goodhue-designed Culbertson Auditorium—had cracked. New additions to the campus include the Cahill Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Center for Information Science and Technology, which opened in 2009, and

5106-654: The Class of 2027 (enrolled Fall 2023), Caltech received 13,136 applications and accepted 412 applicants for a 3.14% admit rate; 270 enrolled. The subsequent year, for the Class of 2028, Caltech reduced the number of seats by almost one hundred, accepting 315 applicants out of approximately 13,000 total applications. For the Class of 2025, 32% were of underrepresented ancestry (which includes students who self-identify as American Indian/Alaska Native, Hispanic/Latino, Black/African American, and/or Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander), and 6% were foreign students. Undergraduate tuition for

5217-476: The Dutchmen Snell and Huygens. In the 18th and 19th centuries Joseph-Louis Lagrange , Leonhard Euler and William Rowan Hamilton would extend the theory of classical mechanics considerably. They picked up the interactive intertwining of mathematics and physics begun two millennia earlier by Pythagoras. Among the great conceptual achievements of the 19th and 20th centuries were the consolidation of

5328-587: The Earth ) or may be an alternative model that provides answers that are more accurate or that can be more widely applied. In the latter case, a correspondence principle will be required to recover the previously known result . Sometimes though, advances may proceed along different paths. For example, an essentially correct theory may need some conceptual or factual revisions; atomic theory , first postulated millennia ago (by several thinkers in Greece and India ) and

5439-637: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and played an integral part in establishing Caltech as one of the world's centers for rocket science . In 1928, construction of the Palomar Observatory began. Millikan served as "Chairman of the Executive Council" (effectively Caltech's president) from 1921 to 1945, and his influence was such that the institute was occasionally referred to as "Millikan's School". Millikan initiated

5550-562: The National Research Council, Hale simultaneously lobbied for science to play a larger role in national affairs, and for Throop to play a national role in science. The new funds were designated for physics research, and ultimately led to the establishment of the Norman Bridge Laboratory, which attracted experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan from the University of Chicago in 1917. During

5661-578: The President , 4 Fields Medalists , and 6 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with Caltech. Caltech started as a vocational school founded in present-day Old Pasadena on Fair Oaks Avenue and Chestnut Street on September 23, 1891, by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop . The school was known successively as Throop University , Throop Polytechnic Institute (and Manual Training School) and Throop College of Technology before acquiring its current name in 1920. The vocational school

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5772-541: The President of the Institute for the management of the laboratory. Caltech is a small four-year, highly residential research university with slightly more students in graduate programs than undergraduate. The institute has been accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges since 1949. Caltech is on the quarter system : the fall term starts in late September and ends before Christmas,

5883-701: The Revolution in 20th-Century Physics (1999), which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Book Prize . Although Gell-Mann himself criticized Strange Beauty for some inaccuracies, with one interviewer reporting him wincing at the mention of it, the book was acclaimed by a number of his colleagues. A revised second edition was published in 2023 by the Santa Fe Institute Press with a foreword by Douglas Hofstadter . In 2012 Gell-Mann and his companion Mary McFadden published

5994-512: The SAT Physics Subject Test was 760–800; SAT Chemistry Subject Test was 760–800; SAT Biology Subject Tests was 760–800. In June 2020, Caltech announced a test-blind policy where they would not require nor consider test scores for the next two years. The moratorium was extended twice, starting July 2021, but was subsequently cancelled starting with the Class of 2029. The institute is need-blind for domestic applicants. For

6105-435: The United States among national universities overall, 11th for most innovative, and 15th for best value. U.S. News & World Report also ranked the graduate programs in chemistry and earth sciences first among national universities. Admission to Caltech is extremely rigorous. Prior to going test blind, Caltech students had the highest test scores in the nation. In admissions for the Class of 2028 (entering 2024), Caltech

6216-524: The University Librarian. Faculty are responsible for establishing admission requirements, academic standards, and curricula. The Faculty Board is the faculty's representative body and consists of 18 elected faculty representatives as well as other senior administration officials. Full-time professors are expected to teach classes, conduct research, advise students, and perform administrative work such as serving on committees. Founded in 1930s,

6327-630: The Warren and Katherine Schlinger Laboratory for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering followed in March 2010. The institute also concluded an upgrading of the South Houses in 2006. In late 2010, Caltech completed a 1.3 MW solar array projected to produce approximately 1.6 GWh in 2011. Caltech is incorporated as a non-profit corporation and is governed by a privately appointed 46-member board of trustees who serve five-year terms of office and retire at

6438-411: The age of 72. The trustees elect a president to serve as the chief executive officer of the institute and administer the affairs on the institute on behalf of the board, a provost who serves as the chief academic officer of the institute below the president, and ten other vice presidential and other senior positions. Thomas F. Rosenbaum became the ninth president of Caltech in 2014. Caltech's endowment

6549-597: The antecedents of NASA 's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán . Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $ 423 million in sponsored research in 2022. Its 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located approximately 11 mi (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles , in Pasadena. First-year students are required to live on campus, and 95% of undergraduates remain in

6660-419: The applications of relativity to problems in astronomy and cosmology respectively . All of these achievements depended on the theoretical physics as a moving force both to suggest experiments and to consolidate results — often by ingenious application of existing mathematics, or, as in the case of Descartes and Newton (with Leibniz ), by inventing new mathematics. Fourier's studies of heat conduction led to

6771-641: The arts and sciences and has high graduate coexistence. Caltech offers 28 majors (called "options") and 12 minors across all six academic divisions. Caltech also offers interdisciplinary programs in Applied Physics, Biochemistry, Bioengineering, Computation and Neural Systems, Control and Dynamical Systems, Environmental Science and Engineering, Geobiology and Astrobiology, Geochemistry, and Planetary Astronomy. The most popular options are Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Physics. The most popular majors of

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6882-514: The body of knowledge of both factual and scientific views and possess a usual scientific quality of the tests of repeatability, consistency with existing well-established science and experimentation. There do exist mainstream theories that are generally accepted theories based solely upon their effects explaining a wide variety of data, although the detection, explanation, and possible composition are subjects of debate. The proposed theories of physics are usually relatively new theories which deal with

6993-459: The book Mary McFadden: A Lifetime of Design, Collecting, and Adventure . In 1958, Gell-Mann in collaboration with Richard Feynman , in parallel with the independent team of E. C. George Sudarshan and Robert Marshak , discovered the chiral structures of the weak interaction of physics and developed the V-A theory (vector minus axial vector theory). This work followed the experimental discovery of

7104-439: The campus tripled in size. DuBridge, unlike his predecessors, welcomed federal funding of science. New research fields flourished, including chemical biology , planetary science , nuclear astrophysics , and geochemistry . A 200-inch telescope was dedicated on nearby Palomar Mountain in 1948 and remained the world's most powerful optical telescope for over forty years. Caltech opened its doors to female undergraduates during

7215-519: The class of 2023 were Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Electrical Engineering. Prior to the entering class of 2013, Caltech required students to take a core curriculum of five terms of mathematics, five terms of physics, two terms of chemistry, one term of biology, two terms of lab courses, one term of scientific communication, three terms of physical education, and 12 terms of humanities and social science. Since 2013, only three terms each of mathematics and physics have been required by

7326-498: The concept of chirality in the theory of the weak interactions and spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in the strong interactions , which controls the physics of the light mesons . In the 1970s he was a co-inventor of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which explains the confinement of quarks in mesons and baryons and forms a large part of the Standard Model of elementary particles and forces. Murray Gell-Mann received

7437-522: The course of the war, Hale, Noyes and Millikan worked together in Washington on the NRC. Subsequently, they continued their partnership in developing Caltech. Under the leadership of Hale , Noyes , and Millikan (aided by the booming economy of Southern California ), Caltech grew to national prominence in the 1920s and concentrated on the development of Roosevelt's "Hundredth Man". On November 29, 1921,

7548-498: The eighth president, announced on February 19, 2013, that he would be stepping down to accept the presidency at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology . Thomas F. Rosenbaum was announced to be the ninth president of Caltech on October 24, 2013, and his term began on July 1, 2014. In 2019, Caltech received a gift of $ 750 million for sustainability research from the Resnick family of The Wonderful Company . The gift

7659-426: The end of the war, Caltech had essentially become an extension of the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance , with its rocket research providing important technology to U.S. combat capabilities. From April to December 1951, Caltech was the host of a federal classified study, Project Vista . The selection of Caltech as host for the project was based on the university's expertise in rocketry and nuclear physics. In response to

7770-458: The first science building on campus. In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arthur Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address at Throop Institute on March 21, 1911, and he declared: I want to see institutions like Throop turn out perhaps ninety-nine of every hundred students as men who are to do given pieces of industrial work better than any one else can do them; I want to see those men do

7881-508: The following: Universities that gave Gell-Mann honorary doctorates include Cambridge , Columbia , the University of Chicago , Oxford and Yale . Theoretical physicist The advancement of science generally depends on the interplay between experimental studies and theory . In some cases, theoretical physics adheres to standards of mathematical rigour while giving little weight to experiments and observations. For example, while developing special relativity , Albert Einstein

7992-672: The funds went into the support of Caltech programs and projects. In 2010, Caltech, in partnership with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and headed by Professor Nathan Lewis , established a DOE Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight. This hub, the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis , will receive up to $ 122 million in federal funding over five years. Since 2012, Caltech began to offer classes through massive open online courses (MOOCs) under Coursera , from 2013, edX , and bootcamps. Jean-Lou Chameau,

8103-416: The highest order, writing Principia Mathematica . In it contained a grand synthesis of the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler; as well as Newton's theories of mechanics and gravitation, which held sway as worldviews until the early 20th century. Simultaneously, progress was also made in optics (in particular colour theory and the ancient science of geometrical optics ), courtesy of Newton, Descartes and

8214-493: The hotel, Vista del Arroyo Hotel, which housed the study. The study operated under a committee with the supervision of President Lee A. DuBridge . William A. Fowler , a professor at Caltech, was selected as research director. More than a fourth of Caltech's faculty and a group of outside scientists staffed the project. Moreover, the number increases if one takes into account visiting scientists, military liaisons, secretarial, and security staff. In compensation for its participation,

8325-455: The idea of energy (as well as its global conservation) by the inclusion of heat , electricity and magnetism , and then light . The laws of thermodynamics , and most importantly the introduction of the singular concept of entropy began to provide a macroscopic explanation for the properties of matter. Statistical mechanics (followed by statistical physics and Quantum statistical mechanics ) emerged as an offshoot of thermodynamics late in

8436-403: The institute, with the remaining two terms each required by certain options. A typical class is worth 9 academic units and given the extensive core curriculum requirements in addition to individual options' degree requirements, students need to take an average of 40.5 units per term (more than four classes) to graduate in four years. 36 units is the minimum full-time load, 48 units is considered

8547-464: The institution with the highest number of Nobelists per capita in America. This includes 46 alumni and faculty members (47 prizes, with chemist Linus Pauling being the only individual in history to win two unshared prizes). In addition, 66 National Medal of Science Recipients, 43 MacArthur Fellows , 14 National Medal of Technology and Innovation recipients, 11 astronauts , 5 Science Advisors to

8658-460: The kind of work that is now being done on the Panama Canal and on the great irrigation projects in the interior of this country—and the one-hundredth man I want to see with the kind of cultural scientific training that will make him and his fellows the matrix out of which you can occasionally develop a man like your great astronomer, George Ellery Hale. Also in 1911, a bill was introduced in

8769-675: The late 1920s. In the aftermath of World War 2, more progress brought much renewed interest in QFT, which had since the early efforts, stagnated. The same period also saw fresh attacks on the problems of superconductivity and phase transitions, as well as the first applications of QFT in the area of theoretical condensed matter. The 1960s and 70s saw the formulation of the Standard model of particle physics using QFT and progress in condensed matter physics (theoretical foundations of superconductivity and critical phenomena , among others ), in parallel to

8880-493: The most successful innovations was the development of the 5-inch High-Velocity Aircraft Rocket , commonly known as the " Holy Moses ," which was used in combat against enemy fortifications and ships. The partnership between the Navy and Caltech continued to deepen throughout the war, leading to the creation of several military technologies, and by 1945, the focus of Caltech’s war contributions expanded further with Project Camel ,

8991-625: The names of five other historical figures affiliated with the Foundation), from campus buildings. Caltech's 124-acre (50 ha) primary campus is located in Pasadena, California , approximately 11 miles (18 km) northeast of downtown Los Angeles . It is within walking distance of Old Town Pasadena and the Pasadena Playhouse District and therefore the two locations are frequent getaways for Caltech students. In 1917 Hale hired architect Bertram Goodhue to produce

9102-717: The on-campus housing system at Caltech . Students agree to abide by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations . The Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III 's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC). Scientists and engineers at or from the university have played an essential role in many modern scientific breakthroughs and innovations, including advances in space research , sustainability science , quantum physics , and seismology . As of October 2022 , there are 79 Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with Caltech , making it

9213-438: The only scientific research-oriented educational institute in southern California, public or private, until the onset of World War II necessitated the broader development of research-based science education. The promise of Throop attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes from MIT to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science and technology. With the onset of World War I , Hale organized

9324-407: The particles as "aces", but Gell-Mann's name caught on. Quarks, antiquarks, and gluons were soon established as the underlying elementary objects in the study of the structure of hadrons. He was awarded a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1969 for his contributions and discoveries concerning the classification of elementary particles and their interactions. In the 1960s, he introduced current algebra as

9435-462: The presidency of Harold Brown in 1970, and they made up 14% of the entering class. The portion of female undergraduates has been increasing since then. Protests by Caltech students are rare. The earliest was a 1968 protest outside the NBC Burbank studios, in response to rumors that NBC was to cancel Star Trek . In 1973, the students from Dabney House protested a presidential visit with

9546-419: The process of becoming established and some proposed theories. It can include speculative sciences. This includes physics fields and physical theories presented in accordance with known evidence, and a body of associated predictions have been made according to that theory. Some fringe theories go on to become a widely accepted part of physics. Other fringe theories end up being disproven. Some fringe theories are

9657-607: The rise of medieval universities , the only acknowledged intellectual disciplines were the seven liberal arts of the Trivium like grammar , logic , and rhetoric and of the Quadrivium like arithmetic , geometry , music and astronomy . During the Middle Ages and Renaissance , the concept of experimental science, the counterpoint to theory, began with scholars such as Ibn al-Haytham and Francis Bacon . As

9768-641: The safety of explosive production at Los Alamos and began producing high explosives just days before the Trinity Test in July 1945. Early in the war, Caltech scientists, including Lauritsen’s son, Thomas Lauritsen , worked on various rocket designs at the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory. These rockets, including the " Tiny Tim " and the " Mighty Mouse ," were used in critical military operations, from naval engagements to land assaults. By

9879-543: The second term starts after New Year's Day and ends in mid-March, and the third term starts in late March or early April and ends in early June. Caltech was ranked within the top ten universities in the world by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings , QS World University Rankings , and Academic Ranking of World Universities . For 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked Caltech as tied for 9th in

9990-517: The small size of its faculty in many major fields, the institution is exceptionally careful in selecting candidates. This rigorous process can result in some positions remaining unfilled for several years until the right candidate is found. Caltech dedicates significant resources to attract top-tier faculty and provides them with substantial financial support to foster their research and academic endeavors. The voting faculty of Caltech include all professors, instructors, research associates and fellows, and

10101-484: The study of physics which include scientific approaches, means for determining the validity of models and new types of reasoning used to arrive at the theory. However, some proposed theories include theories that have been around for decades and have eluded methods of discovery and testing. Proposed theories can include fringe theories in the process of becoming established (and, sometimes, gaining wider acceptance). Proposed theories usually have not been tested. In addition to

10212-472: The theories like those listed below, there are also different interpretations of quantum mechanics , which may or may not be considered different theories since it is debatable whether they yield different predictions for physical experiments, even in principle. For example, AdS/CFT correspondence , Chern–Simons theory , graviton , magnetic monopole , string theory , theory of everything . Fringe theories include any new area of scientific endeavor in

10323-502: The trustees declared it to be the express policy of the institute to pursue scientific research of the greatest importance and at the same time "to continue to conduct thorough courses in engineering and pure science, basing the work of these courses on exceptionally strong instruction in the fundamental sciences of mathematics, physics, and chemistry; broadening and enriching the curriculum by a liberal amount of instruction in such subjects as English, history, and economics; and vitalizing all

10434-499: The two "didn't commute", as Gell-Mann said. He received his Ph.D. in physics from MIT in 1951 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "Coupling strength and nuclear reactions", under the supervision of Weisskopf. Subsequently, Gell-Mann was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1951, and a visiting research professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign from 1952 to 1953. He

10545-452: The university received about $ 750,000. From the 1950s to 1980s, Caltech was the home of Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman , whose work was central to the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics. Feynman was also widely known outside the physics community as an exceptional teacher and a colorful, unconventional character. During Lee A. DuBridge 's tenure as Caltech's president (1946–1969), Caltech's faculty doubled and

10656-539: The vision provided by pure mathematical systems can provide clues to how a physical system might be modeled; e.g., the notion, due to Riemann and others, that space itself might be curved. Theoretical problems that need computational investigation are often the concern of computational physics . Theoretical advances may consist in setting aside old, incorrect paradigms (e.g., aether theory of light propagation, caloric theory of heat, burning consisting of evolving phlogiston , or astronomical bodies revolving around

10767-577: The war in Korea and the pressure from the Soviet Union, the project was Caltech's way of assisting the federal government in its effort to increase national security. The project was created to study new ways of improving the relationship between tactical air support and ground troops. The Army, Air Force, and Navy sponsored the project; however, it was under contract with the Army. The study was named after

10878-475: The war, some scientists from Caltech, including J. Robert Oppenheimer , Richard Tolman , and Robert Bacher , were instrumental in the Manhattan Project and contributed to critical aspects of the atomic bomb's development. Caltech was also directly involved in other bomb-related research with a group led by Charles Lauritsen which assisted in the development of the high-explosive lenses used in

10989-500: The weak interaction. Another of Gell-Mann's ideas is the Gell-Mann–Okubo formula, which was, initially, a formula based on empirical results, but was later explained by his quark model . Gell-Mann and Abraham Pais were involved in explaining this puzzling aspect of the neutral kaon mixing . Murray Gell-Mann's fortunate encounter with mathematician Richard Earl Block at Caltech, in the fall of 1960, "enlightened" him to introduce

11100-416: The whole of Pasadena, into a major scientific and cultural destination. He engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer , a literary scholar untutored in science but very capable in administration and fund-raising, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $ 25,000 in seed money (equivalent to $ 800,000 in 2023) to build Gates Laboratory,

11211-474: The work of the Institute by the infusion in generous measure of the spirit of research". In 1923, Millikan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics . In 1925, the school established a department of geology and hired William Bennett Munro , then chairman of the division of History, Government, and Economics at Harvard University , to create a division of humanities and social sciences at Caltech. In 1928,

11322-530: The works of these men (alongside Galileo's) can perhaps be considered to constitute the Scientific Revolution. The great push toward the modern concept of explanation started with Galileo , one of the few physicists who was both a consummate theoretician and a great experimentalist . The analytic geometry and mechanics of Descartes were incorporated into the calculus and mechanics of Isaac Newton , another theoretician/experimentalist of

11433-523: Was a visiting associate professor at Columbia University and an associate professor at the University of Chicago in 1954–1955, before moving to the California Institute of Technology , where he taught from 1955 until he retired in 1993. He was on sabbatical at the Collège de France for the academic year 1958–1959. Gell-Mann married J. Margaret Dow in 1955; they had a daughter and

11544-510: Was concerned with the Lorentz transformation which left Maxwell's equations invariant, but was apparently uninterested in the Michelson–Morley experiment on Earth 's drift through a luminiferous aether . Conversely, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for explaining the photoelectric effect , previously an experimental result lacking a theoretical formulation. A physical theory

11655-486: Was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form the independent Polytechnic School in 1907. At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale , a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago , founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904. He joined Throop's board of trustees in 1907, and soon began developing the university, and

11766-428: Was established in 1986 to assemble, preserve, translate, and publish papers selected from the literary estate of Albert Einstein and from other collections. In fall 2008, the freshman class was 42% female, a record for Caltech's undergraduate enrollment. In the same year, the Institute concluded a six-year-long fund-raising campaign. The campaign raised more than $ 1.4 billion from about 16,000 donors. Nearly half of

11877-495: Was founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891 and began attracting influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale , Arthur Amos Noyes , and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century. The vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910, and the college assumed its present name in 1920. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities , and

11988-422: Was given a kinematic explanation by general relativity . Quantum mechanics led to an understanding of blackbody radiation (which indeed, was an original motivation for the theory) and of anomalies in the specific heats of solids — and finally to an understanding of the internal structures of atoms and molecules . Quantum mechanics soon gave way to the formulation of quantum field theory (QFT), begun in

12099-580: Was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission. The United States Navy also maintained a naval training school for aeronautical engineering , resident inspectors of ordinance and naval material, and a liaison officer to the National Defense Research Committee on campus. During

12210-416: Was ranked the hardest college in America to gain acceptance to by admit rate, at an all-time low of 2.7%. For the freshmen who enrolled in 2019 (Class of 2023) the middle 50% range of SAT were 740–780 for evidence-based reading and writing and 790–800 for math, and 1530–1570 total. The middle 50% range ACT Composite score was 35–36. The SAT Math Level 2 middle 50% range was 800–800. The middle 50% range for

12321-693: Was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at California Institute of Technology as well as a university professor in the physics and astronomy department of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico , and the Presidential Professor of Physics and Medicine at the University of Southern California . He was a member of the editorial board of the Encyclopædia Britannica . Gell-Mann spent several periods at CERN ,

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