In September of 1891, Pasadena philanthropist Amos G. Throop (pronounced Troop) established Throop University, the institution that would become Caltech nearly three decades later.
Throop University opened its doors with 31 students and a six-member faculty, and might have remained simply a good local school had astronomer George Ellery Hale not settled in Pasadena in 1904 to become the first director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Hale became a member of Throop’s board of trustees in 1907 and began molding the school into a first-class institution for engineering and scientific research and education. Chemist Arthur A. Noyes and physicist Robert A. Millikan later joined Hale on the board, becoming known as the Institute’s three founders.
The school was renamed the California Institute of Technology in 1920, at which time it boasted an enrollment of 359 undergraduate and nine graduate students, with a faculty of 60. A decade later there were 510 undergraduate and 138 graduate students, with a faculty of 180. Today, the Institute averages 1,000 undergraduates, 1,400 graduate students, 300 professorial faculty, and more than 500 postdoctoral scholars.
To learn more about Caltech’s history and the people behind the Institute’s success, visit archives.caltech.edu.