Basic Research 

 and the PRIVATE 

 UNIVERSITY 



LEE A. DuBRIDGE 



California Institute of Technology 



1 WISH to introduce this subject by talking 

 about research problems at one private institution — Caltech. 

 I know that these problems will be found in other institutions, 

 both private and public. And I know also that quite different 

 problems may be found by still other institutions, both private 

 and public. 



Caltech is a small private institution with a highly selected 

 student body, restricted to about 700 undergraduate and 500 

 graduate students. When it was reorganized into its present 

 form in 1920, it became devoted to the proposition that research 

 and teaching should be inseparable activities in a school of 

 science and engineering. Hence small teaching loads, adequate 

 funds for research, and a small student body selected for its 

 creative and research potential have always been the ideals, and 

 these ideals have, to a substantial extent, been achieved. 



A second pair of ideals was also adopted, namely, that all 

 research activities should be of a basic nature aimed at the 

 extension of knowledge, but, at the same time, the Institute 

 would choose its fields of interest in such a way as to be of 



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