Pictured here is the Millikan Library, named for Robert Andrews Millikan, an experimental physicist who joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1917, back when it was still called the Throop College of Technology. Millikan earned the 1923 Nobel Prize in physics "for his work on the elementary charge of electricity and on the photoelectric effect."Before you start thinking Millikan was some kind of big deal, get this: more than one in 1,400 Caltech alumni have received the Nobel Prize. That's better than any other university, anywhere. Them's good odds. (Grammar's not a Caltech specialty.)
Other Caltech Nobel laureates include Linus Pauling (who received two Nobel Prizes: the Peace Prize and the Prize for Chemistry), William A. Fowler, Carl D. Anderson and Edward B. Lewis. Oh and a certain Albert Einstein was a visiting Caltech professor back in the day.
It's possible I could have a future Nobel laureate for a neighbor. Seriously. I already have a rocket scientist living across the street.
When I was in college, nerds were not cool. Times change.
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