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Article: The little research school that could. (California Institute of Technology)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- May 28, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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GREAT treasures sometimes come in small packages. The California Institute of Technology may well qualify as the crown jewel of America's research institutes. The university in Pasadena, ten miles east of Los Angeles, with just 850 undergraduates and about 1,000 graduate students, is tiny by American standards, yet it claims 21 Nobel prize-winners among its faculty and former students.
Caltech, as it is known, is also the home of some of the great discoveries in the history of science. It was there that Thomas Hunt Morgan fixed the role of genes in heredity and Linus Pauling discovered what holds molecules together. The institute also has an enviable reputation ...