Word: caltech
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Scholar von Karman was an assistant professor at the Royal Technical University in 1903, when the Wright brothers made their first flight. Nine years later he was head of the newly organized Aeronautical Institute at Germany's University of Aachen. In 1928 he took a research job at Caltech, settled there permanently in 1930, became a U.S. citizen...
...professionals gathered in Caltech's Dabney Hall in Pasadena were well qualified to speak on the subject. Among them: M.I.T.'s President James R. Killian Jr., Caltech's President Lee A. Du-Bridge, M.I.T.'s Dean (engineering) Carl Richard Soderberg, Caltech's Physicist and Mathematician Robert F. Bacher, M.I.T.'s Gordon S. Brown (electrical engineering). Almost without exception M.I.T. and Caltech freshmen are the scholastic cream skimmed off the top 10% of national high school enrollment. "It's the rare Caltech student whose IQ falls below 130," explained Psychologist Weir. "The average...
Free Rovers. Physicist Bacher described one way of doing it. At Caltech, he reported, there is now a course known only as Physics X, conducted by Dr. Richard Feynman for students with top-grade averages. It carries no academic credit and is totally unplanned. Theoretical Physicist Feynman has established only two course rules: "Questions can't be prompted by some other Caltech course, and they have to be prompted by some natural phenomenon." In 18 months Feynman's gifted students, mostly sophomores and juniors, have pushed far beyond the standard range into subjects, e.g., quantum mechanics and relativity...
Spotty Spotters. But some thought that total freedom was unwise. "Most college freshmen, at 17, aren't secure enough to tolerate the absence of intellectual con trols without anxiety," said Psychologist Weir. Added Caltech's George Beadle: "Isn't there a fallacy in complete freedom? Most of us have to have a push to get things done." M.I.T.'s Soderberg: "Since our students are relatively immature at the beginning of college, completely unrestricted freedom probably can't be applied until the third year...
...should be done at the secondary level. But this is often impossible because, of 22 or so schools in the U.S. that train teachers to handle ex ceptional children, all but two schools are interested in training them for "the exceptionally handicapped, rather than the exceptionally bright." Added Caltech's Frederick Lindvall: "There's a stigma attached to being called a brain. The athletic department is much more successful than we are at singling out its exceptional students...