have continuedtoinfluenceair-pollution Board. SinceresearchersCaltech then, AirResourcesmation oftheCalifornia exhaust, ultimatelyprompting thefor tist todirectly linksmogtoautomobile Haagen-Smit becamethefirstscien In the1940s,CaltechchemistArie Lifted theFogonSmog management with new insights into mately every two years. would double approxi transistors onasinglechip mised that thenumber of Moore’s Law, correctly sur prediction, popularlyknownas for personalcomputers.His1965 croprocessors thatpavedtheway ’54) developedmemorychipsandmi co-founder ofIntel,Gordon Moore (PhD at Fairchild Semiconductorand,later, As director ofresearch anddevelopment Made ComputingPersonal urban smog formationanddis urban coveries about the origin, coveries abouttheorigin, chemistry, andevolu tion of particles in tion ofparticlesin the atmosphere. ------that canconvertplantwasteintofuel. hasuseddirected ample, Arnold evolutiontoengineerenzymes used inmedicine,neurobiology, energy. andalternative Forex process ofnaturalselectiontocreate newenzymes thatcanbe neered thetechniqueofdirected evolution,which mimicsthe pio In the1990s,CaltechchemicalengineerFrancesArnold Directed Evolution protections includingtheCleanAirActof1970. remove leadfrom gasolineandtoimplementenvironmental throughout the1960s,Patterson’s research drove efforts to ingly, the human body.findings his about skepticism Despite to cannedfish,oceanwater, Antarctic ice,and,mostalarm that toxic lead contaminated everything from his lab instruments Caltech geochemist Clair Patterson unexpectedly discovered Attempting tocalculatetheageofearth(4.55billionyears), Fought LeadContamination scale integration(VLSI),Meadmadeitpossible 1972. Through aprocess knownasvery-large- ’60) validated thesciencebehindMoore’s Lawin Caltech engineerCarverMead(BS’56,MS’57,PhD Pioneered Chip Design and DVD players. and DVDplayers. tablets, smartphones, es suchaslaptops, today drivedevic of processors that abling thebuilding electronics, en revolutionized for tensofthou con chip.VLSI asinglesili sands oftran packaged on sistors tobe ------
cameras incellphones. is ultimatelyresponsible forputting metal-oxide semiconductor(CMOS), That technology, thecomplementary that functionsasacameraonchip. invented anewkindofimagesensor futureat spacecraft,engineers JPL Tasked withminiaturizingcamerasfor and CellPhones Put CamerasinSpace— California. ing Southern address otherpowerneedsofarapidlyindustrializ lightningprotectionfurnish tooilstoragetanksand velop high-voltagetransmissionlines,whichwould Edisonde California The laboratoryhelpedSouthern first inthecountrytohaveamillion-voltpowersource. A high-voltage laboratory builton campus in1923 was the Put theVolts inHigh-Voltage Lines Over theyears,Caltechhas… that definethetimes. answers tothescientificquestions tools andtechnologieswhileseeking of studyandinventedworld-changing behalf ofNASA,havelaunchednewfields oratory (JPL),whichCaltechmanageson on campusandattheJetPropulsion Lab founded in1891.Researchers andengineers inquiry andinnovationsincetheInstitutewas Caltech scientistshavebeenattheforefront of
ternet traffic.ternet are themaininformation carriersofin applied physicist.Today, suchlasers Caltech’s AmnonYariv, an engineer and ductor lasers,developedinthe1970sby rely ondistributedfeedback semicon Fiber opticcommunicationssystems Connected theWorld - - - - -
INNOVATION 305 77 16 1,928 190 fiscal year, Caltechwasassociatedwith: Institute isrecognized asaleaderininnovation.Inthe2017 and graduatestudents,600postdoctoralscholars,the society. Withacommunityof300faculty, 2,200undergraduate Caltech hasanoutsizedimpactonscience,technology, and material transferagreements licenses (includingoptions) new start-upcompanies active U.S.patents U.S. patentsissued 2012 and2015. issued between U.S. patents 660 with more than its peers, Caltech led IMPACT
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www.caltech.edu by the robots, and otherautonomoussystems. testing thenextgenerationof drones, researchers are imagining,creating, and Autonomous SystemsandTechnologies, Cover:
At Caltech’s newCenterfor Built the Tools that Measure Earthquakes Delved into the Science of Decisions In the 1930s, Caltech seismologists Beno Caltech researchers launched the field of be- Gutenberg and Charles Richter (PhD ’28) de- havioral and social neuroscience, providing veloped the Richter scale, a numerical scale experimental insights into how individuals for measuring earthquake magnitude. Near- Demoted Pluto; choose between healthy and unhealthy foods, ly 50 years later, Caltech seismologist Hiroo Promoted a New why consumers pay more for goods they can Kanamori and graduate student Thomas touch, and why (and when) people are willing Ninth Planet C. Hanks (PhD ’72) developed the moment to take risks. Searching for distant objects magnitude scale, allowing for more accurate at the edges of the solar Made Sense of the readings of larger quakes at greater distances. Turned Thoughts into Action system, Caltech astrono- Brain’s Split Functions mer Mike Brown discovered Caltech psychobiologist Roger In 2015, Caltech neuroscientist Richard Led Earthquake Monitoring a dwarf planet, Eris, that is Launched Sperry’s split-brain experiments Andersen demonstrated that a neuropros- In collaboration with colleagues and volun- more massive than Pluto. His the Lab that Put the Wind Beneath, Well … Everything revealed the separate functions of thetic device, implanted in the part of teers across California, Caltech researchers discovery triggered Pluto’s de- Launches Rockets Researchers have used Caltech’s John W. Lucas Adaptive Wall the brain’s two hemispheres: the left the brain that controls the intention to are using low-cost accelerometer chips motion to dwarf-planet status. Students and researchers Wind Tunnel and its historic 10-foot predecessor to test every- half controls verbal and mathematical move, helps paralyzed patients more (like those found in smartphones) to provide from the Guggenheim Aero- thing from military and commercial aircraft to Olympic bicy- functions as well as analytic and se- easily control robotic limbs. For exam- block-by-block estimates of shaking and Then, in 2016, Brown and Caltech nautical Laboratory at Caltech cles and electric cars. Insights made possible by the tunnels quential reasoning, while the right con- ple, patients have used their minds to damage during an earthquake, and are work- planetary scientist Konstantin Batygin (GALCIT) were the driving force have led to more fuel-efficient vehicles and inspired trols spatial and conceptual reasoning, direct a robotic arm to pick up a cup ing with the U.S. Geological Survey to develop (MS ’10, PhD ’12) published theoretical behind the creation of JPL in the IMPACT research on hypersonic technology. visualization, and creativity. of water and lift it to their mouths. an earthquake early-warning system. evidence of a true ninth planet—one 10 1930s. JPL, which Caltech manages times more massive than Earth—tracing on behalf of NASA, is the leading cen- a bizarre orbit around the sun. The an- ter for exploration of the solar system. nouncement of a potential new Planet Nine Lab scientists launched the nation’s ignited a worldwide, sky-wide hunt. first satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958; the twin Helped the Blind See Identified the Positron Voyager spacecraft in 1977; and the Mars Caltech electrical and medical Caltech physicist Carl Anderson Science Laboratory in 2011, among many engineer Yu-Chong Tai helped (BS ’27, PhD ’30) provided other missions. develop a retinal prosthesis that the first empirical proof that Caltech research continues to allows blind patients to see again antimatter exists with his dis- drive giant leaps forward in through electrical stimulation. covery of the positron. Today’s Wrote the Book on Physics The prosthesis acts as biologi- positron emission tomography Caltech physicist Richard Feynman— knowledge about the world, the cal photoreceptors normally do, (PET) scanners—which produce whose work set in motion the fields of universe, and the human mind. stimulating neurons in the retina detailed 3-D images of meta- nanotechnology, quantum computing, to create an image. bolic activity in the body—are a and quantum electrodynamics—authored result of his discovery. and delivered a series of lectures that became one of the most popular physics Detected books ever written, The Feynman Lec- Ripples in tures on Physics. Spacetime Led by Caltech physicists Kip
Captured Reactions in Action Redefined Surgical Precision Thorne (BS ’62), Ron Drever, and Caltech chemist Ahmed Zewail developed a A team at JPL developed the Robot Determined Most Barry Barish, along with MIT’s technique, ultrafast electron microscopy, that Assisted MicroSurgery (RAMS) system Connected Bacteria Atoms on Earth Were Rainer Weiss, the Laser Interfer- allows researchers to study atomic-level images that enables surgeons to perform operations to the Brain Created in Stars ometer Gravitational-wave Obser- of chemical reactions as they occur. The method with 20 times more accuracy than can be Caltech microbiologist Sarkis vatory (LIGO) made the first-ever Caltech physicist Willy Fowler, working relies on extremely short laser pulses—so brief achieved by the human hand alone. This Mazmanian discovered a con- detection of gravitational waves—ripples with research fellow Margaret Burbidge they last mere femtoseconds, each one-millionth method is widely used, including in 40 nection between the microbi- in spacetime—in September 2015. The photo credits: inside from left, panel and other colleagues, showed that all but of one-billionth of a second. percent of prostate surgeries nationwide. ome—the bacteria living in the detection, which came 100 years after 1: (top) istock.com/Gugurat, (bottom) the very lightest elements—making up ev- istock.com/pkujiahe; panel 2: (top) human gut—and the motor- Albert Einstein predicted the existence of erything from the ground underfoot to the air gravitational waves in his general theory of rel- istock.com/dulezidar, (middle) istock. Sequenced DNA skill deterioration associated com/SensorSpot, (bottom) istock. Produced a Wonder Material all around to human muscle and bone—were ativity, opened a new window onto the cosmos, In the 1980s, Leroy Hood (BS ’60, PhD ’68) with Parkinson’s disease. com/Supersmario; panel 3: (top) Caltech physicists Nai-Chang Yeh and David Boyd created by nuclear reactions within stars. ushering in the field of gravitational astronomy. built the automated DNA sequencer, help- This research is part of istock.com/GaryKavanagh, created a commercially feasible method of pro- (middle) original by Wikimedia.org/ ing launch the field of genomics and mak- broader investigations on ducing graphene, a wonder material made of a Jens Maus, (bottom) Six Dun/ ing possible the Human Genome Project, the manner in which single layer of carbon atoms. Graphene is 200 Trained Eyes on the Skies shutterstock.com; panel 4: (top) the successful effort to sequence all 3 billion Championed the Treatment good bacteria promote Found the Building Caltech researchers have designed and built the world’s NASA, (middle, background) times stronger than steel, several times more NASA/JPL-Caltech. outside base pairs of DNA. Since then, Caltech biol- of HIV/AIDS or protect human most sophisticated telescopes and astronomical obser- conductive than silicon, and has the potential to Blocks of Matter from left, panel 1: (top) istock. ogist Barbara Wold (PhD ’78) has pioneered health. transform electronics manufacturing. Yeh imag- In the mid-1990s, David Ho (BS ’74) discovered Caltech theoretical physicist Murray vatories, including the W. M. Keck Observatory, whose twin com/sankai, (middle) NASA, next-generation sequencing technologies ines, for example, a graphene-based cell phone that HIV is never dormant but constantly mutates in Gell-Mann and graduate student George telescopes are currently the largest and most scientifically (bottom) © Can Stock Photo that are building understanding of how Inc./maxxyustas; panel 2: screen that generates its own power. order to continue its assault on the immune system. Zweig (PhD ’64) independently discovered productive on Earth. The Keck telescopes have made possible (top) tarczas/shutterstock. groups of genes direct the development of a His insight led to the development of antiretrovi- quarks—subatomic particles that are the the observation of young stars, ancient galaxies, and dozens of fertilized egg, for example, or how DNA mu- com, (bottom) istock. ral therapies that have dramatically increased the main components of protons and neutrons. planets—some potentially habitable—outside the solar system. com/zentilia; cover: tations cause cancerous tumors. lifespans of HIV-infected patients. Caltech.