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California nstitute of Technology Pasadena, Cal i fornia 91125 Change service requested a I t e c h N e w 5 Volume 35 , Number I c 2 0 0 1 I nTh 5 I 5 5 U e Revisiting Mid-Century Cal tech Reinterpreting Feynman Building for Biomedicine's Future and Redefining the Desktop Cal fornia Institute Volume 35, Number I of Technology 2 0 0 I N e w 5 QED 3 Caltech friends of Richard Feynman critique a new play about him. David Clayton Builds Biomedical Bridges 6 HHMI vice president helps create a new type of research facility. 10 Organization Woman Enfish executive taps into desktop market. Also in this issue: Scientists peer at the dark of the moon; alumni go out of their way (and uphill) to write in; Blair Folsom hits pay dirt in his "own backyard"; and technicians take on a job of astronomical proportions, on the back-page poster. Picture Credits: Cover-Ray Brennan of L.A. Engraving, Doug Cummings; 3-Doug Cummings, Doug Smith, Bob Paz; 4-Philip Goode, Big Bear Observatory; 4,5,8,lO, 13,19,Back Cover-Bob Paz; 5-M. Konishi; 6,7-HHMI photos; 8-Elton Siwell, Chris Yates; 11-1978 Big T and Enfish; 12-Blair Folsom, Caltech file photo; 13-Doug Smith, Cal tech file photo; 14-Po Wah Gong, Brian Post, Mount Washington Observatory. Issued four times a year and published by the California Institute of Technology and the Alumni Association, 1200 East California Blvd., Pasadena, California 91125. All rights reserved . Third class postage paid at Pasadena, California. Postmaster: Send address changes to: Caltech News, Caltecb 1-71, Pasadena, CA 91125. ON THE COVER Blair A. Folsom Executive Editor - Heidi Aspaturian A few things have changed President of the Alumni Association Associate Editor - Hillary Bhaskaran since 1941 , including the Ernest Nunnally Writer - Rhonda Hillbery colors in the image on this J. Caltech News cover. The Vice President for Institute Relations Contributors - Jill Perry, Michael Rogers, original Big T illustration Robert L. O 'Rourke Robert Tindol, Mark Wbeeler appears below. Associate Vice President for Institute Relations Copy Editors - Emily Adelsobn, Michael Jane S. Dietricb Farquhar, Elena Rudnev Director of Periodicals CirC1/lation Manager - Susan Lee Photographer - Robert Paz Graphics Prodllction - Doug Cummings whose staff put the photo essay on the flies that have been pedigreed through Web in a modern-day format with 280 generations, [and} a 200-in. tele A SCROLL DOWN commentary. Archivists] udith Good scope mirror which next year will ex MEMORY LANE stein and Shelley Erwin, historian tend man's sight millions of light years Kevin Knox, and Web designer Glenn beyond its present horizons." (The Hale The school that Ben Rosen attended Smith '96 produced the site, accessible telescope is featured on page 19 and on was all male, he recalls. Coats and ties at http://archives.caltech.edu/life_ the back-page poster of this Caltech were de rigueur at dinner. The campus article/. News.) ended at San Pasqual. Faculty focused The magazine essay points out the When Provost Steve Koonin '72 on doing "a few things well, rather links between basic research and its saw the piece on the Web, he was than trying to do everything in science practical applications. It highlights the "amazed" to see how much of the 60- and technology." That was in the early opportunities for Caltech students, year-old description of the Institute's 1950s. including undergraduates, to partici philosophy and character was still ap Fast forward to 200l. Rosen '54 pate in all aspects of this research. It plicable. "Either we're sticks-in-the recently came across an old issue of Life extols the virtues of poker. mud, or Millikan et al. really did put In 1941, Techers were hard at work in the lab, magazine featuring his alma mater in "The importance of investigations as depicted in this illustration from the Big T. together the right formulation for a a photographic essay. The March 17, into the architecture of molecules, into And when they weren't in the lab? Read on. great research universi ty." 1941, issue provides a snapshot of the properties of sinusoidal curves, into The 1941 magazine is one of 600- Cal tech that reveals, to Rosen and the dynamics of electrons may seem at some issues of Life and Time magazines others, how much the Institute has first remote," it states. But "these for wings, in the more efficient production ftom the 1930s, '40s, and '50s that changed in appearance and how little it ays on the frontiers of knowledge play and transmission of electric power." Rosen has located and purchased. He has changed in purpose in the course of their part in the fight against vitus Considering Caltech's ratio of "about says that browsing through the collec 60 years. How will the next wave of diseases, in the design of airplane two graduate scientists to every three tion is "like reading history as it hap readers perceive the piece? undergraduates," the essay continues, pens, unfiltered by time." "When I happened upon the ar Cal tech News invites readers to "it is not long before the undergraduate Photographs from 1941 show ticle," says Rosen, who now chairs share their reminiscences, including their catches the fever of aspiration to deeds Techers taking exams, sleeping on the Caltech's board of ttustees, "I immedi perspectives on how things have changed of brain and hands." Students then as Athenaeum's open-air balcony, and ately felt that I should share it with the or remained the same throughout their now conducted research in laboratories; playing three-dimensional ticktacktoe broadest Cal tech community." He do association with the Institute. Please their resources included "a 2,000,000- and poker. Poker, it is said, "provides volt atom smasher, millions of fruit nated the issue to the Caltech Archives, send e-mail to [email protected]. Continlled on page 16 .. 2 1 California I nstitute of Tech nology · VOL UME 35 NO.1, 2001 David Goodstein, Caltech's vice provost suspect that, like Feynman, Alan AIda night, Feynman is to appear beating his and professor ofphysics and applied physics, plays Alan AIda. And so now, at the bongo drums as the chief of Bali Hai in was a friend and colleague of Richard Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, the Cal tech student production of the Feynman's for nearly a quarter-century, so before a house that was sold out for its Rodgers and Hammerstein musical it was natural that Cal tech News would entire run before it even opened, we South Pacific. In the course of the day, ask him to share his views on QED, a play have Alan AIda playing Alan AIda Feynman learns by phone from his about Feynman, starring Alan AIda, that playing Richard Feynman playing doctors that his cancer has returned and premiered in April at the Mark Taper Richard Feynman, in a play by Peter new, even more perilous surgery is Forum in Los Angeles. Goodstein has writ Parnell called QED. needed. He debates his treatment with ten frequently about Feynman 's life and And it works! AIda doesn't look like his doctors, and he debates the form of work, and he shares with Feynman the Feynman and, in spite of what must the final report on the space shuttle distinction of being the only Caltech profes have been valiant efforts, he doesn't Challenger disaster, again by phone, sor besides Robert Millikan to receive the sound much like him either. I came to with the chairman of the investigating American Society of Physics Teachers' the play fearing that AIda would talk commission, former Secretary of State Oersted Medal for important contributions the talk and walk the walk, but like William Rogers. He works on a public to the teaching ofphysics. In 1995 he was one of those south Pacific cargo cults lecture he had forgotten he was sup named Caltech's FrankJ.Gilloon Distin Feynman used to like to talk about, it posed to give in a couple of days. Some guished Teaching and Service Professor. The would be all outward appearance, lack Russians arrive at the airport and show following commentary by Goodstein origi ing the inner guts that made Feynman up off-stage, part of a scheme to help nally appeared in the May 2001 issue of who he was. Miraculously, almost the Feynman gain entry to the mysterious Physics World. exact opposite happens. AIda puts the Soviet Central Asian land of Tuva. Dick Feynman I knew back up there, All the while, he talks to his audi Richard Feynman was the star of his on the stage, where he always belonged. ence, in the Feynman idiom, about own life. Feynman played Feynman, The play takes place in Feynman's things big and small-physics, sketch and he played it to the hilt. He was office at Caltech. Like AIda himself, the ing nude women, his father, his first always on stage whenever he had an set doesn't look like the real thing, but wife, himself. There are lots of good audience, no matter how small. captures its spirit. It is a Saturday Q E o Although I don't know him at all, I morning, near the end of his life. That Continued on pa g e 13 . ALAN ALDA PLAYS RICHARD FEYNMAN ON STAGE: A CALTECH PHYSICIST AND A STAGE DIRECTOR WEIGH IN Pursuant to the pleasure of finding things out, Alan Aida paid a visit to the Caltec h campus this spring to find out all he could about RPF for his role in QED.