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"TheDickens of It." To DuBridge and the men of Caltech, knowledge is its own reward. The great principles discovered may one day lead to a cure for cancer or a trip to the moon. But Caltech is the home of purists—purists in a technological Babylon that sometimes appears to tolerate them only because they inevitably turn out to be the men behind the men behind some new physical blessing. For no tangible reason at all, the men of Caltech have peered into the dawn of time, measured the invisible, eavesdropped on thunder over Jupiter. Their goal is not to produce, only to understand. "Really," says Astronomer Ira S. Bowen, who directs the jointly operated observatories, Caltech's Palomar and the Carnegie Institution's Mount Wilson, "astronomy is the most useless of all sciences. Why are we astronomers? For the dickens of it."
Fortunately for the nation, Caltech has never compromised with the dickens-of-it approach, nor has it ever ceased to make fundamental principles the entire content and purpose of its education. As a result, it occupies a special place in the esteem of scientists and engineers. Though it may have rivals, it has no superior anywhere in the world. "Other places," says Nobel Laureate Isidor Rabi of Columbia University, "have good people. But at Caltech, they are all good."
Not as a Stranger. Just how Caltech achieved its extraordinary stature is one of the phenomena of U.S. education. Since it took its present form only 35 years ago, it is not only the youngest of its peers among U.S. universities, it is also one of the smallest (600 undergraduates, 450 graduate students). On its 30-acre campus of stucco, Mediterranean-style buildings and olive-shaded walks, no one is a stranger, and with its faculty of 350, it has the luxuriously high teacher-student ratio of about one to three. While other campuses glut themselves with courses, Caltech will happily drop a few (most recent examples: meteorology and industrial design) on the refreshing theory that "if Caltech can't do a job within its sphere better than anyone else, then there's no sense in doing it at all." Over the years, it has either trained or hired for permanent positions five Nobel Prizewinners. It has 42 names in American Men of Science and the highest percentage (9%) of facultymen in the National Academy of Sciences.