Caltech and the History of American Science Syllabus

Schedule of Class Topics and Readings

• Temple to Science (1891–1930)

  • Judith R. Goodstein, Millikan’s School: A History of the California Institute of Technology (1991), 23–87.
  • Daniel J. Kevles, “George Ellery Hale, the First World War, and the Advancement of Science in America,” Isis 59 (1968): 427–437.
  • Robert H. Kargon, “Temple to Science: Cooperative Research and the Birth of the California Institute of Technology,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 8 (1977), 3–31.
  • For more on George Ellery Hale, see Helen Wright, Explorer of the University: A Biography of George Ellery Hale (1966).

• The Conservative Mode (1896–1945)

  • Robert H. Kargon, “The Conservative Mode: Robert A. Millikan and the Twentieth-Century Revolution in Physics,” Isis 68 (1977): 509–526.
  • Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990), 17–24, 54–62.
  • Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (1982), xv–xviii, 160–217.
  • Anthony M. Platt and Cecilia E. O’Leary, Bloodlines: Recovering Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws from Patton’s Trophy to Public Memorial (2006), 121–131.
  • For more on Robert Millikan, see Robert H. Kargon, The Rise of Robert Millikan: Portrait of a Life in American Science (1982).

• Eugenic Nation (1913–1943)

  • Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America, second edition (2015), ix–xv, 1–27, 82–110.
  • Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (1993), 3–103.

• The Molecular Vision I (1928–1940)

  • Robert E. Kohler, “Drosophila and Evolutionary Genetics: The Moral Economy of Scientific Practice,” History of Science 29 (1991): 335–375.
  • Nicolas Rasmussen, “The Forgotten Promise of Thiamin: Merck, Caltech Biologists, and Plant Hormones in a 1930s Biotechnology Project,” Journal of the History of Biology 32 (1999): 245–261.
  • Kay, Molecular Vision of Life, 104–190.
  • The literature on the Morgan group is extensive, including Garland E. Allen, Thomas Hunt Morgan: The Man and His Science (1978); Katherine Keenan, “Lillian Vaughan Morgan (1870–1952): Her Life and Work,” American Zoologist 23 (1983): 867–876; Robert E. Kohler, Lords of the Fly: Drosophila Genetics and the Experimental Life (1994).

• The Molecular Vision II (1943–1953)

  • Kay, Molecular Vision of Life, 191–282.
  • David P. D. Munns, “‘The Awe In Which Biologists Hold Physicists”: Frits Went’s First Phytotron at Caltech, and an Experimental Definition of the Biological Environment,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 36 (2014): 209–231.

• Escape from Earth

  • Fraser MacDonald, Escape from Earth: A Secret History of the Space Rocket (2019), excerpts.
  • Erik Davis, “Babalon Launching: Jack Parsons, Rocketry, and the ‘Method of Science,’” Magic in the Modern World: Strategies of Repression and Legitimization, edited by Edward Bever and Randall Styers (2017), 119–146.
  • Clayton R. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1982), ix–xiv, 1–42.

• JPL and the American Space Program

  • Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program, 42–160.

• JPL and the American Space Program

  • Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program, 161–252.
  • For more recent history of the JPL, see Peter J. Westwick, Into the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976–2004 (2007) and Erik M. Conway, Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars (2016).

• Modeling Weapons

  • Peter Galison, “Feynman’s War: Modelling Weapons, Modelling Nature,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (1998): 391–434.
  • W. Patrick McCray, “Project Vista, Caltech, and the Dilemmas of Lee DuBridge,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 34 (2004): 339–370.
  • Matthew Shindell, “From the End of the World to the Age of the Earth: The Cold War Development of Isotope Geochemistry at the University of Chicago and Caltech,” in Science and Technology in the Global Cold War, edited by Naomi Oreskes and John Krige (2014), 107–140.

• Giant Telescopes

  • W. Patrick McCray, Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology (2006), excerpts.
  • W. Patrick McCray, “How Astronomers Digitized the Sky,” Technology and Culture 55 (2014): 904–944.
  • David P. D. Munns, A Single Sky: How an International Community Forged the Science of Radio Astronomy (2012), excerpts.
  • Harry Collins, “LIGO Becomes Big Science,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 33 (2003): 261–297.
  • Harry Collins, Gravity's Shadow: The Search for Gravitational Waves (2004), excerpts.

• “Girls Coming to Tech!”

  • Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World Since 1972 (2012), excerpts.
  • Amy Sue Bix, Girls Coming to Tech! A History of American Engineering Education for Women (2013), 1–28, 191–222.
  • Matthew H. Wisnioski, “‘Liberal Education Has Failed’: Reading Like an Engineer in 1960s America,” Technology and Culture 50 (2009): 753–782.