President's 2025 Year-end Essay

To: The Caltech Community
From: Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and Professor of Physics

In early November I was in New York, connecting with Caltech alums and friends. It was unexpectedly chilly, at least by Pasadena standards: 30 degrees Fahrenheit with wind whipping off the water and snow flurries dancing about. Lunch was at the shining Hudson Yards complex, where Caltech grads in finance, crossing disciplines and generations, had gathered. The wind was blowing so hard off the Hudson River that you had to lean forward to make any progress up the street. If there were lampposts on 10thAvenue, we would have grabbed on.

Thinking back, this image strikes me as an apt metaphor for the present. The headwinds are blowing – whether it be levels of federal funding for research, the ability of international scholars to join the Caltech community, or the challenge to rebuild in the wake of the devastating January fires – and the uncertainty can stop you in your tracks. 

Where are the lampposts that will steady our journey and help propel us forward?

First and foremost, we must protect the essence of the Institute. Our success stems from being able to attract the most creative and accomplished faculty, postdocs, students, staff, and JPLers in the world. We create an environment and structures where they invent new approaches and new technologies, and define new fields of inquiry. Caltech's particular strength is that our culture encourages our researchers to shift directions as more powerful tools and more consequential problems emerge. Whatever the conditions, we will preserve Caltech's unique environment and our ability to recruit and retain the best talent.

We have to stay in touch with the excitement of discovery. Vassar astronomer Maria Mitchell, the first woman inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, put it this way: "We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us, and the more we gain, the more is our desire; the more we see, the more we are capable of seeing." It is a wonderful time to be doing science in terms of the questions that can be asked and the advances that lie shimmering on the near horizon. We have the tools to make a difference, and we need to continue to be inspired to use them to their full effect.

Cross-generational connections are another key element in building resilience. This is a feature of our undergraduate residences, and for our alumni the shared experiences extend across the miles and the decades. Caltech's mantra is to get better, not bigger. By staying small, we develop the intellectual relationships and personal friendships that speed the exchange of ideas and seed interdisciplinary collaborations, and, at the same time, develop a collective identity as the Caltech community. We can call upon these shared values and deep connections to surmount difficulties and to seize opportunities.

Caltech will be a formidable institution of higher education for hundreds of years, and it will continue to be true to its mission of forefront research and education in service of society over the centuries. That is a certainty. I wish you a new year of security, success, and lamps lit brightly.