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The California Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Caltech)[3] is a private, coeducational research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech maintains a strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering. Caltech also operates and manages the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA organization that oversees the design and operation of many unmanned space probes. Caltech is a small school, with only about 2100 students (about 900 undergraduates and 1200 graduate students),[2] but is ranked in the top 10 universities worldwide by metrics such as citation index, Nobel Prizes, and general university rankings. Caltech began as a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop. The school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, and Throop College of Technology, before acquiring its current name in 1921.[4] Caltech and the Polytechnic School, a private, college-preparatory academy across the street, were part of the same institution until 1907. Astronomer George Ellery Hale played an important role in Caltech's early development, helping to mold the school into a major scientific institution. Hale joined Throop's board of trustees after coming to Pasadena in 1907 as the first director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, Hale saw an opportunity to create in Pasadena an institution for serious research and education in engineering and the natural sciences. Hale succeeded in attracting private gifts of land and money that were used to build well-equipped, modern laboratory facilities. He then convinced two of the leading American scientists of the time, physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes and experimental physicist Robert Andrews Millikan, to join Caltech's faculty and assist in establishing the college as a center for science and technology. In 1917 Hale hired architect Bertram Goodhue to produce a master plan for the 22 acre (89,000 m²) campus. Goodhue conceived the overall layout of the campus and designed the physics building, Dabney Hall, and several other structures, in which he sought to be consistent with the local climate, the character of the school, and Hale's educational philosophy. Goodhue's designs for Caltech were also influenced by the traditional Spanish mission architecture of Southern California.
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