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IMPACT by the Numbers IMPACT by the Lifted the Fog on Smog In the 1940s, Caltech chemist Arie Haagen-Smit became the first scien- numbers tist to directly link smog to automobile exhaust, ultimately prompting the for- mation of the California Air Resources Board. Since then, Caltech researchers have continued to influence air-pollution management with new insights into Caltech has an outsized impact on science, technology, and urban smog formation and dis- society. With a community of 300 faculty, 2,200 undergraduate coveries about the origin, Put the Volts in High-Voltage Lines chemistry, and evolu- A high-voltage laboratory built on campus in 1923 was the and graduate students, and 600 postdoctoral scholars, the tion of particles in first in the country to have a million-volt power source. Institute is recognized as a leader in innovation. In the 2017 the atmosphere. The laboratory helped Southern California Edison de- velop high-voltage transmission lines, which would fiscal year, Caltech was associated with: furnish lightning protection to oil storage tanks and address other power needs of a rapidly industrializ- Fought Lead Contamination ing Southern California. 190 Attempting to calculate the age of the earth (4.55 billion years), Caltech geochemist Clair Patterson unexpectedly discovered U.S. patents issued that toxic lead contaminated everything from his lab instruments to canned fish, ocean water, Antarctic ice, and, most alarm- Caltech scientists have been at the forefront of ingly, the human body. Despite skepticism about his findings inquiry and innovation since the Institute was 1,928 throughout the 1960s, Patterson’s research drove efforts to remove lead from gasoline and to implement environmental founded in 1891. Researchers and engineers active U.S. patents protections including the Clean Air Act of 1970. on campus and at the Jet Propulsion Lab- Directed Evolution oratory (JPL), which Caltech manages on 16 In the 1990s, Caltech chemical engineer Frances Arnold pio- behalf of NASA, have launched new fields new start-up companies neered the technique of directed evolution, which mimics the process of natural selection to create new enzymes that can be of study and invented world-changing used in medicine, neurobiology, and alternative energy. For ex- tools and technologies while seeking ample, Arnold has used directed evolution to engineer enzymes 77 that can convert plant waste into fuel. answers to the scientific questions licenses (including options) that define the times. Over the years, Caltech has… 305 material transfer agreements Connected the World Fiber optic communications systems Caltech led Pioneered Chip Design rely on distributed feedback semicon- its peers, ductor lasers, developed in the 1970s by Caltech engineer Carver Mead (BS ’56, MS ’57, PhD Caltech’s Amnon Yariv, an engineer and with more than ’60) validated the science behind Moore’s Law in applied physicist. Today, such lasers INNOVATION 1972. Through a process known as very-large- are the main information carriers of in- scale integration (VLSI), Mead made it possible Put Cameras in Space— ternet traffic. Made Computing Personal for tens of thou- 660 and Cell Phones As director of research and development sands of tran- U.S. patents Tasked with miniaturizing cameras for at Fairchild Semiconductor and, later, sistors to be future spacecraft, engineers at JPL issued between co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore (PhD packaged on invented a new kind of image sensor ’54) developed memory chips and mi- a single sili- that functions as a camera on a chip. 2012 and 2015. www.caltech.edu croprocessors that paved the way con chip. VLSI That technology, the complementary for personal computers. His 1965 revolutionized metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS), prediction, popularly known as electronics, en- is ultimately responsible for putting Cover: At Caltech’s new Center for Moore’s Law, correctly sur- abling the building cameras in cell phones. Autonomous Systems and Technologies, mised that the number of of processors that researchers are imagining, creating, and transistors on a single chip today drive devic- testing the next generation of drones, would double approxi- es such as laptops, robots, and other autonomous systems. mately every two years. tablets, smartphones, and DVD players. 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
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