Episode 7 Transcript: A Formula for Success

Introduction (00:03): Great science and engineering often begin with a singular hypothesis, but how does a lone spark of innovation become popular science? From Caltech, this is The Lonely Idea.

Rich Wolf, host (00:15): Welcome back to another session of The Lonely Idea. I'm here with President Tom Rosenbaum, the president of Caltech. Tom, welcome to the program.

Thomas F. Rosenbaum, guest (00:23): Thank you, Rich. It's really great to be here.

Wolf (00:25): Tom, we know you as a physicist and we know you as the president of Caltech, but maybe could you go back all the way back to the very beginning of when you decided that you wanted to become a scientist?

Rosenbaum (00:35): Sure. I grew up in New York, as you may know, and lived in Queens, which was not the City for the aficionados who know New York City, but spent most of my time actually in the city by subway; we didn't have a car. Went to a lot of theater, a lot of jazz, just fantastic place to grow up. Although I became a scientist, I really felt that that environment exposed me to all kinds of different cultures and different interests, which I've tried to keep up and which I hope our students keep up in their lives and their pursuits.

It was the time that the moon landings and the Apollo program. And I think for the generation before me, it was Sputnik, but for me, it was Apollo. And I just became fascinated with that. I liked math. I liked better using math to solve problems. And so physics seemed natural. And then you saw the engineering accomplishments of going to the moon and the influence that had on the world. And I think about that here, of course, Caltech runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And during the midst of the pandemic, we landed on Mars and we flew a helicopter on Mars. And what a boost for humanity during a grim time. I think a lot of that feeling was even there when I was a kid.

Wolf (02:01): Let's go back to that period. That's a very interesting place to start, which is in the 1950s and '60s. It was the height of the Cold War. And within science, physics was king. Physicists were solving all the major problems. In some ways, they solved maybe some not so great problems with nuclear armament, but physics was driving the space race. It was driving telecommunications. It was driving everything in science and there was a buzz about it. What do you think it was like for those physicists and what was it like to be a scientist in that period? Because, obviously, that inspired you.

Rosenbaum (02:32): I think society appreciated what science was contributing. There was a palpable sense of threat, of course, because of the Cold War. As kids, we were actually training going under our desks in school in case there was a nuclear explosion. Not that that would have done much good, but that was the prevalent feel. And hard science—in the sense of physics, mathematics, chemistry—held sway in that way. This was before really molecular biology took off.

Wolf (03:04): You find this incredible love for science and physics in particular. Where did that take you next as in the specifics of the science that you wanted to study?

Rosenbaum (03:13): Right. So I wanted to get some experience doing lab work. I did a summer science project NSF-funded when I was in high school out of Stony Brook and entered the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. That was really formative, actually, to see what it was like to create knowledge. Not that anything I did was all that revolutionary, but you learn the process and you learn some of the satisfaction when things work, and of course, some of the frustrations when things don't work. But tinkering like that was really terrific. And in college, I also worked in a laboratory during my senior year, during the summer before my senior year. And I was introduced to the community of a laboratory group. Faculty member Mike Tinkham was a faculty member and Bill Scotch-Paul as well. This was at Harvard, and the graduate students were terrifically kind to me. In fact, I'm still in touch with some of them now. And I felt like I was part of a bigger enterprise.

I do want to note though that one of the best things I did in college is my senior year, I basically finished all my physics requirements. So I took all philosophy and English courses, and it was great. And I think this is an important part of getting a "proper," I'll start sounding like my father, but a liberal arts education that lets you see the world through eyes of others, that develops empathy, and teaches you how to write, which is really an important skill. And I think even at Caltech, a Mecca of science and technology, we have a responsibility to expose our students to that and encourage them to develop those lifelong passions.

Wolf (05:06): I've always believed that a significant chunk of the hypothesis in the experimental method—which you touched on the experimental method in your remarks—a significant chunk of that can be driven by your knowledge of the humanities. It's our philosophy around the world around us. It's the quest motif of wondering what's outside the scope of our own solar system. And it does broaden us. And there's an old saying that at Caltech, what we call physics at Caltech, they call theoretical physics anywhere else, and what we call theoretical physics, they call religion anywhere else. And so maybe say more about kind of how that outside influence of taking those philosophy classes of being a well-rounded student affected the research that you then went on to do as a faculty member?

Rosenbaum (05:53): I think that embedding what you're doing in context and in history is extremely important and there've been many mistakes throughout the history of science that way. At the turn of the century into the 1800s, beginning of the 1900s, there was this feeling that physics was finished, right? Because electromagnetic theory, classical mechanics all worked so well. And of course, this was the time when the quantum revolution just began. And so understanding the ebb and flow of the quest for knowledge, understanding humanity's quest throughout the ages to understand science, understanding that asking a good question is sometimes better than getting the answer even if you are wrong with your theory, you can propel a field forward by delineating new ways of thinking about problems. And I think the contextualization of that, which comes from the history, which comes from philosophy is extraordinarily important.

I think it's also why this whole discussion of diversity is important. That people come in with different perspectives, different backgrounds, different ways of looking at problems. It's not that they're using different equations. I mean, obviously, physics and math are the same in that sense no matter what your background, but the way you think about the world, the way that you choose a problem, how you might go off in a certain direction, how you synthesize ideas can be influenced incredibly by your education, by your upbringing, and by your approach. And it's what makes Caltech so rich to be a destination of choice and have so many talented individuals who do have that richness and expansive approach. And then we create an environment where we put them in colloquy.

Wolf (07:53): Tom, it's an incredible lead into the whole concept of what inspires the original hypothesis in anything. And it sounds like as you're looking back over your career as a scientist, and we're going to get onto your career as a president, as you look back, it seems like a huge chunk of what you think inspires the greatest hypotheses or in the context of this podcast, the loneliest of ideas is the breadth of things that go outside the scope of the field that you study. It's the other things that come into play, whether it's a philosophy book that you've read or an experience that you've had traveling, or some relationship that you've had with someone in the lab that has inspired you to come up with a new hypothesis.

Rosenbaum (08:29): I think that's right. I worry, to be honest, sometimes I'm too linear. I see some of my colleagues who come up with these ideas which just seem to come out of the air. And somehow, there's a new way of thinking about an idea. I mean, right now, we're reinventing seismology. People are using optical fibers instead of traditional seismometers. And all of a sudden, you have incredible resolution on how you can understand the inner workings of the earth. The ability to latch on to the appropriate construct, I think, is exactly what you say, is influenced by that broader experience. And I don't know how many people have the "aha!" eureka moments of Archimedes sitting in the bathtub, but there is something like that when the ideas just go around in your head. You're frustrated, you can't quite figure it out. You don't understand what your data is telling you. You don't understand what's right or wrong potentially on it. And I firmly believe that learning about different fields, different approaches, different kinds of problems feeds in then to your ability to be able to discern the direction you should go.

Wolf (09:52): This is such an interesting theme. It's come up three or four times in other podcasts, which is often the loneliest of ideas, the craziest of stuff that drives the science starts with two things: I feel dumb and I need to talk to someone about it. And whether it's dark matter where all of a sudden we wake up one day and we say, "Maybe this standard model isn't quite right," and we have to rethink the way we're doing all of this. Or it's the way we think about Mars. When I was taught about Mars, it was devoid of water and devoid of life historically. Now we're talking about just how much water was on Mars. And obviously, JPL is contributing to that, but it's also this notion of the group and working in the group and what the ecosystem provides you. Whether it's the diversity of thought or the number of graduate students that are around you and how you create that ecosystem. What is the secret to how Caltech has created the ecosystem? What is it like and what do you do to feed it?

Rosenbaum (10:46): Caltech is a very special place. Of course, I'm a completely biased observer.

Wolf (10:50): As you should.

Rosenbaum (10:53): But it is remarkable in what it is able to do with the limited number of individuals who are part of Caltech. And for me, the answer to the question of how does that work are the cultural attributes, and we're confronted or presented lots of times with other institutions around the world that want to model themselves after Caltech. They come and ask, what is it that we can do? And you can have long discussions about structure, and structure's important. And we can talk a little bit about, what are the structural attributes that make Caltech work well. But it really comes down to something much harder, which is developing a culture that is one which prizes excellence, one which encourages fearlessness, one that recognizes ambition. And there are so many stories here of my colleagues. And then of course, there're students who go off on their own who start in one direction and find a problem that is more interesting, that they've come across outside their field going back to what we were talking about, and throw caution to the winds and just change the direction they're going.

You have to understand the opportunity cost in science for this is very large because you're in a funding cycle, you're getting recognition, and you now have to start all over. But Caltech creates a culture which encourages this. It also creates a culture where one is always looking around to learn from your colleagues as you are intimating. And so we get this multiplier effect and it's intense, it's intimate, and it's very special. Now, part of this is that you can't do everything, right? You have to make choices when you're small. And making choices is a wonderful intellectual rigor and discipline that we hold to very strongly here. And it's part of the reason why people switched fields as well. Because of course, if you can't do everything, you're not going to hire somebody else in that field and you use the talent you have and you go after these fields.

Wolf (13:19): It's an interesting concept because part of what you're saying is Caltech leads with "yes." How can we say yes? And I think a lot of other institutions lead with "no." There's a bioengineer, when I asked him what it was like at another institution, and I had said, "What differentiates these two places?" And he said, "Well, Caltech is smaller and there's less bureaucracy." And I said, "But what else?" And he said, "I feel like I can take more risk." That sounds like an important theme of what you're describing. Because I look at the number of things that you've initiated just under your tenure. I'm going to rattle a few of them off because if you go back in the history of Caltech, I don't think there's been as many new initiatives under any presidential administration than what has just happened under your tenure in the last few years.

The Resnick Sustainability Institute, the Bioscience Initiative, the Chen Neuroscience Institute, the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative, the Merkin Translational Institute, now more recently, the Hurt Scholars Program, the work that you just described in seismology, the advances that we've made at JPL. I can go on and on and on. And a huge part of that seems like at the top, we are leading with "yes." How do we get to a yes? How do we allow these faculty members to take risk? What is it that we're doing? What's the special sauce there?

Rosenbaum (14:30): Trying to identify the secret ingredients is always a challenge, but I do think a major component is getting people in the room who share the same values, who want to create knowledge that will be important for generations or use that knowledge to improve people's lives today and let them run free. Part of this is seed funding. It does take resources. Part of it is cultural, as I was saying. And part of it is a structure where ideas go freely back and forth. There's an open-door policy. You're confronted by a problem. There are not a lot of people who are doing what you're doing here because of our size and so you wander down the hall, you wander to the next building and you bang on somebody's door or you're at the Red Door Cafe and you have a conversation, and it leads to a new collaboration.

Now, lots of places talk about interdisciplinary work, but Caltech really exercises it and that's where the structural part comes in. So for example, you're a graduate student. You're applying to a particular option at Caltech, mechanical engineering, let's say. You get in, you come here. It doesn't mean you have to work for a mechanical engineer. If you get interested in a biology problem, you can go work for a biologist. You don't have to transfer departments or options. You just go and if your advisor will take you on, you can do that. And so there's all this cross-fertilization that comes up really naturally. Now, it's not scalable. If we had 10 times the graduate students, it might not work. But given the intimate nature of Caltech, we can do that.

Wolf (16:16): There's something amazing about that. I remember Professor Babak Hassibi saying to me, "At my former institution, there were four other people that did what I did. And we had lunch together every day. And we had coffee together every day and we talked about our field and that was great." But he said, "At Caltech, when I walk out of my office, there's nobody that does what I do. I'm the only person here. And so if I want to have lunch with someone or have coffee with someone, I better go talk to a biologist or a chemist or someone even different within electrical engineering." And there must be something to this notion of just dropping all those barriers. By being small, we drop all those barriers, but there's also something to the idea that no one's out there ready to judge you. You're not on trial. I feel dumb and I need someone to talk to. We accept the nuttiest of concepts and hypotheses and we're willing to fund them.

Rosenbaum (17:03): Yes, but we test them. So we want to test if they're right or not, but that's right. There's a self-selection for a type of person who is comfortable in that environment and not everybody is I did my thesis work at Bell Labs and there were, I don't know, 11 or 12 low temperature physicists with dilution refrigerators. And I could have stayed at Bell and I chose to go to Chicago in part because I was the first real low temperature physicist to go to Chicago at that time. And that was really appealing to me, the fact that as much as I enjoy talking to my colleagues at Bell and I still collaborate with connections I made at Bell, the notion, A, of having students, and B, of being the person who was not only trying to help define a direction, but was then forced to reach out and get help from others who did different things was really appealing.

And I think that is completely true of how faculty and students, maybe staff as well, make their choice to come to Caltech. They see that opportunity. They see that to succeed, they're going to have to adopt a certain mode of approach to solving problems and contributing to solving problems. That's part of the culture that continues and goes on. In a lot of ways, my job simply is to make sure that that culture is strong and even gets better. You talked about the different initiatives. It's partly areas where we can see, we, Caltech, can see that we can be the best in the world on making contributions to important problems, or the areas like sustainability where we've done good things over the years, but we haven't been the leader, but where we now see a problem that's so important to the future of humanity that Caltech has to play there. We know that we can attract the kind of people who can make a difference. We know with resources, and here, of course, philanthropy has played a huge role with the very generous Resnick gift. We know that with those resources combined with the talent, we can do something special.

Wolf (19:20): As we think about some of these ideas that are germinating here at Caltech today, and we can use these initiatives maybe as the cornerstone for this, if the '50s and '60s during the Cold War was an era of physics and big science in the space race, and you could say that the '90s and 2000s were about tremendous advances in molecular biology as a function of DNA sequencing and just understanding things at a molecular level, is sustainability the next most important? Is creating a habitable planet the next most important piece? Or are there other things that you think about as you look into your crystal ball for the next 10 years and you say, "This is where Caltech has the opportunity to make the greatest difference"?

Rosenbaum (19:59): Well, sustainability has to be one of them, but I want to emphasize that we don't hire sustainability scientists. We hire individuals who have demonstrated their capabilities, their contributions, their intellectual prowess in fundamental areas of inquiry like chemistry, physics, engineering, you name it, biology—but have an interest in applying those skills to a problem like sustainability. And then we mix these individuals across the Institute. And in some ways, that's the secret sauce and I think it's very important. We don't hire generalists. We hire specialists who have breadth of interest and then together create the environment where you can solve those problems. But look, for our children, our grandchildren, the changes that are going on in climate and global warming here are going to dominate society and the functioning of society.

And so, yes, Caltech has to play a role there and can play a role. I wouldn't want to say it's exclusively where we can contribute. I mean, the age of biology and medicine, and here, of course, the areas where you've been extremely active in in terms of translation and developing medical devices and new drugs, all those are extremely productive and promising areas where of course we want to contribute. In a lot of ways, from my point of view, this is the age of astronomy or second age of astronomy as much as it is the age of biology.

The field is now developed to a level of precision, which is remarkable. When you can be that precise, you can now test theories in different ways. You can develop a far deeper understanding of what's going on. Add to that the fact that we now can use gravitational waves to probe the most violent events in the universe, the production of the chemical elements that are in the high end of the periodic table as remarkable new age. Information travels across the universe at the speed of light in only two ways. One is the electromagnetic spectrum, and you can go back to Galileo for that, and now gravitational waves. And we're talking about a decade now or less than a decade. So all of the sudden, you have this new window and Caltech runs the largest optical telescopes in the world right now in the Northern hemisphere in Hawaii, of course, the Keck telescopes, and we co-lead LIGO with MIT. So we have an opportunity now to combine these two different ways of looking at the universe in ways that no other place can. We have to be active there, and we can understand humanity's place in the universe in a different way than we've ever been able to.

Wolf (22:48): If we continue on the quest that we're on with TMT, we'll create the largest aperture ever created and see just a blink of an eye after the big bang.

Rosenbaum (22:55): That is correct. And we will be able to look at the atmospheres of exoplanets and potentially see if there's life there. So talk about a change in conception of humanity's place in the universe, the notion of are we alone or are we not alone? We may know in the next few decades.

Wolf (23:14): TMT stands for the Thirty Meter Telescope, the size of the aperture. This is a very bold endeavor. This is a greater than billion-dollar endeavor with us and a number of partners, including the University of California system. Maybe could you talk a bit about what you think that portends for us when it's up and running and there's first light, what does it mean?

Rosenbaum (23:32): In a lot of ways, and this goes back to the Mount Wilson Observatory in the 1920s, you're photon-limited. That is how much light can you collect lets you look farther out in the universe, which is farther back in time. So the 100-inch telescope, which has a wonderful story, actually hauled up the mountain, gets to the top. After all this work and design through World War I and delay, open the aperture, look, the picture's blurry. And what had happened was that it hadn't had time to thermally equilibrate. And so the next day, everything was fine, but you can imagine George Ellery Hale and his reaction in that, but of course, Hubble then made the measurements that showed that the universe was expanding. And we now had a different way of looking out. Palomar, which was the 200-inch was the next one, the Kecks, which are 10 meters, the next largest one. And with each generation of a bigger dish, you wind up with more photons, more resolution, looking with much more clarity at what's near you and being able to stretch beyond that farther back in time.

So the Thirty Meter Telescope with its adaptive optics will increase those kind of capabilities by a factor of 100. All of a sudden now, you'll be able to see things that go back to the start of when galaxies were forming. You'll be able, as I said, to focus on these planets that are orbiting other suns, seeing if they're chemical signatures, doing spectroscopy in the atmospheres. So we can help answer two of the fundamental questions that have been eternal: Where did we come from, and are we alone?

Wolf (25:30): So in the next little period here, this is really quite simple. We're going to solve the issue of climate change. We're going to see the origins of the universe. We're going to develop new drugs and modalities for treating and potentially curing disease. And we're going to colonize Mars.

Rosenbaum (25:43): Yeah. We will be part of that. And you make it sound so easy, and of course, it isn't, but that is the promise, right? I mean, that's why students come here. That's why the next generation wants to do science.

Wolf (25:57): I was only partially being tongue in cheek because in effect, that is what we're doing. We're leading with yes. We're not saying, "Don't try that." We're not saying, "Don't build the biggest telescope ever. Don't create a unique sustainability institute that's going to interrogate the world differently, come at it from a different scientific perspective." We're saying, "Yes, let's do that."

Rosenbaum (26:17): Right. And we're saying, "Let's try different ways of doing it as well." So the subject matter, they can be areas where we've worked in many years, quantum mechanics. And we didn't talk about that, but there's a second quantum revolution going on in terms of entanglement. Einstein's spooky action at a distance versus quantized energy levels, which led to the whole transistor and electronics revolution. So we will see a second revolution that way. And we've done that for a long time, right? At Caltech, going back to Pauling and Feynman and Gell-Mann and all the others, all the other luminaries of the time. But then we're also trying new areas. I think that's really important for a place without growing to substantial effect. That means you have to ask what it is that you don't, aren't able to do. And that's as important as asking as what you can do.

Wolf (27:13): Are there things that we aren't able to do that keep you awake at night?

Rosenbaum (27:17): I'm not sure it keeps me awake at night. I believe that we're a flexible enough institution and we have the right people that we're not going to miss out on a revolutionary idea, the lonely idea. But you make bets, and it will certainly be true that we will get some of those bets wrong. We will do well, but we won't get everything right. Universities are special places, but funny places. They last for hundreds of years, maybe a thousand years, actually, and so to build efforts that are going to last that long, you need buy-in from all parts of your constituencies and all your constituencies, and that is time-consuming.

So although Caltech is nimble, it still doesn't change on a dime. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but it is a limitation, as you think about areas where you can make contributions. So if you ask me what I worry about, that I lose sleep about, it is, are we being dynamic enough? Are we keeping the edge? Are we keeping the culture going? Are we identifying those issues as best as we can and bringing everyone along and getting the buy-in so that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, the important problems will still be in our sights?

Wolf (28:45): It's amazing. When I hear you talk about the science and Caltech, I think of great athletes. I think of great scientists, great leaders who all have the same thing when they're absolutely at the peak of their game, so to speak. They all talk about, am I working hard enough? Am I being vigilant enough? Am I thinking enough about the problems the way I should? I mean, there's something about great leadership that is almost paranoid. It's concerned. Am I doing all the right things? And I can tell you as somebody who sits from afar, it's amazing the number of things that Caltech is doing.

I want to take us a slightly different direction. I want to talk a bit about leadership and what it means to be a leader in this day and age. And we're going to go back to your 1950s and 1960s metaphor. The space race is going on. Sputnik has happened. The Apollo program is in full swing. We're about to walk on the moon. It was just a glorious renaissance for physics and for science. Not just for physics, but for all science and engineering. And we've been through other periods like that in medicine in the last many years, I would argue. We've had this amazing ability to start to genuinely think about curing disease, certainly treating disease much better.

We went through a weird period here with the pandemic, and in the end, science won. In fact, we had just in one example of vaccines, we had two Turkish scientists working in a German company collaborating with a US multinational led by two immigrants, a chief scientist and a CEO who are both immigrants of this country, that basically came up with a vaccine that helped save the world. I mean, there's no greater example of collaboration, of dropping borders, dropping intellectual borders, as well as physical borders and achieving something great. But at the same time, the world has been hesitant in a way that at least as I study the history, we haven't been. What is happening? What is happening today that's different than what was going on when everybody was excited about the space race or everybody was excited about sequencing the human genome? What has happened today that's different?

Rosenbaum (30:51): That's an awfully complicated question as you well know. From the scientific point of view, we have a belief in the scientific method in making hypotheses of testing them and believing there is an answer. That there is truth and you can't make things up. And we believe that the science is advanced by the free exchange of ideas and the free movement of people. And all these assumptions or value systems that undergird scientific progress have been called into question by various political trends, by various social trends. And I think as I said, I think the isolation that's been the worst part of it.

Wolf (31:40): Well, and this was not like analyzing the moon landing. This was something that was very personal to many of us. We had friends, we had family, many individuals who had COVID or who had experiences that were tragic. And so this personal visceral reaction probably is an overlay that's unique, and was different than the previous important periods in history. In fact, the only analogy that I can come up with was the religious analogy at the time of Galileo and early astronomers and Hutton and Lyell and others where people were fighting their philosophical and religious cannon and the impact that that was having on scientific data that was being put in front of them. That was not an easy thing. I don't think we should trivialize that. It's the closest thing I can come up with, or are there other ways that you think about it?

Rosenbaum (32:34): Well, I think there's a remarkable irony and I don't understand enough to explain it well, but this is a time of scientific advance that is in many ways unparalleled. And certainly the vaccines, the record time to a vaccine, as horrible as the pandemic has been, it could have been a lot worse, and yet it has not been embraced in a way that has saved the most number of lives. In fact, it's hard to argue that really is a triumph for science in the public eye given the politicization of vaccines and of wearing masks and everything else and the assault on the ordering, if you will, of the universe in terms of believing that there are things that are true and there are things that aren't, and we as individuals have a responsibility towards finding truth and standing up for it and standing up for our principles.

I think this juxtaposition probably tells us a lot about the underlying clash, but you're going to need a much better sociologist or psychologist or something or someone who studies human civilizations to contextualize this. And it's hard when you're living through these. So maybe I could make one more statement. I think we have responsibilities as scientists, as members of a scientific and technological institution, to continue to push for what we believe. And particularly when it's not popular, or maybe even when there's not resonance. Universities are one of the few places left where we want to encourage individuals with different perspectives to get together and to argue, to be open to having their minds changed to the belief that is through that exchange of ideas with empathy, with believing in the good faith of the arguments of other individuals with whom you're talking that you can create knowledge and you can improve the world.

And we have to continue to maintain that because if we don't, I don't know where else it's going to be. And it may seem a small contribution, but I have a firm belief that value systems are long lasting and ultimately triumphant. And maybe that's just the optimism of being in an environment where there are a lot of like-minded people that way. But I do think that we can make a contribution which may seem small, may seem on the edges at this present time, isn't flashy, but long term will be significant.

Wolf (35:22): You're echoing something that's so important in science because the world may or may not understand just how much scientists are trained in the art of humility. We're trained in it every day when we do experiments that fail. We're trained in it every day when things that we think for sure are right turn out to be wrong. And this concept of truth and untruth is bordered by facts. It's bordered by data, and scientists work so hard to not only express the data in the cleanest clearest possible way, but they then offer it in the peer review process to everyone else out there to then challenge that. Maybe what would turn the tide is slowly advancing the narrative around that process because I feel like one of the things that was lost during the pandemic was people had a very hard time distinguishing between spurious conjecture, and actual data. And it's difficult. I found myself, and I'm trained as a scientist, I found myself in that milieu thinking, "Oh, wait a minute. That's just someone's opinion. And because they're a scientist or physician or politician doesn't necessarily mean I have to believe them. They aren't clicking it in data."

Is that an avenue for us, in which case, back to your original liberal arts education, there's so much more we can do to help educate our scientists to improve the broader communication of what they do?

Rosenbaum (36:48): Your emphasis on data is exactly right. As scientists, we are trained to interrogate the validity of the data and that's something that is not generally done. And I agree with you that if we could get to the point of saying that this is only science if it's falsifiable, which is the scientific method, we would be contributing quite a bit. And we would be opening people's eyes to this enormous amount of information that's out there, opening their eyes as to how to navigate through it. So I think the emphasis on data is just right. I think it's also right to note that scientific progress also goes in jumps and starts with Thomas Kuhn's notions there. And so you can be in a particular mindset looking at data and not misrepresenting it, but perhaps not appreciating its true meaning and its true value. We have to be open to that notion as well. As Caltech, we want to be one of those places that has this punctuated advance in terms of understanding new ways of looking at the world. But again, it has to be based on data with the understanding that different ways of looking at data can lead you to different conclusions, but you can't ignore the data.

Wolf (38:16): I want to conclude with a topic that I know is near and dear to your heart. And I think you're too modest to highlight it as one of your own, but it is something that's happened under your leadership, and it's two things. One that's been around for a few years and one that's very new. Echoes everything we've been talking about in this podcast. And that's the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative and the brand new Hurt Scholars Program. Each one fills a very important niche in achieving all of the stuff that you talked about. Maybe could you talk about your excitement around each one of those things, how that differentiates us, and what it's going to mean for science?

Rosenbaum (38:52): So when you were asking me this question, Rich, of course, the listeners can't see it. I was smiling, and I was smiling because each of these initiatives, as beautiful as they are, is also so much more meaningful because it's associated with an individual. Jim Rothenberg in the case of the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative, Bill Hurt, of course, for the Hurt Scholars Program. I'm extremely proud of those programs and they've yet to reach their full potential, but they will. But it's so much more meaningful because it's also the vision of the philanthropists who made them possible. Jim Rothenberg, and you knew Jim better than I did, just an extraordinary, modest leader who had a vision of taking what intellectual property we create in universities and turning it over to society in ways that would make people's lives better.

He understood how universities worked well enough to know that part of the barrier was that scientists don't like doing the same thing over and over again. So you make a discovery, right? But the next step if you want to make a commercial product is de-risking it, making sure that it's scalable, repeating experiments in different ways. And it's hard to get money to do that and it's sometimes hard to get the interest of the scientists to do that. And the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative where you played a key role, Rich, provides funds for those faculty members and students who are interested in pursuing their original discovery and getting it to a point where they can decide, does this really have commercial promise? That process is very unusual in a university context. It's more usual now. And if I may note, it has financial implications, of course, for institutions, but far more important than that, it has recruitment and retention implications.

Young people today in particular, but not only young people, but I think young scientists, if they don't see the potential of taking their discoveries and translating that for the benefit of society, will not come to Caltech. We have to provide this infrastructure and that was a large part of it. And then, of course, we're building off that with all other accoutrements. Jim saw that. He saw that early and he provided the wherewithal to do that. And now you put together the native entrepreneurism and the tools and you have something very special.

The Hurt Scholars is a program dear to my heart. We've just launched it. And Bill believed in complex adaptive systems. So complex adaptive systems is the notion that even if you understand the individual elements, when you put them together, you get surprising results. So take the neurons in your brain. Okay? We can understand exactly every neuron, how it's constructed, how it works, but there's a long way from that and taking a billion of them, putting them together, and getting consciousness and thought. So that emergent behavior, those surprises that you can't predict from just the microscopics of the individual elements is what Bill really saw as a model, I think, for life, and he saw it in terms of human beings. We started talking over a period of four or five years about thinking about Caltech as a complex adaptive system. We bring all these talented individuals—and this loops back to where we started—with different perspectives, with different disciplinary expertise.

What happens if we gently choreograph interactions where they're exchanging ideas so we understand at some level what they're doing in their disciplines, but now when we mix them together—in ways that they can teach together, they can hold workshops together—what new ideas will emerge? How will Caltech change and how will we become an even more powerful place in terms of attracting these creative individuals? That's the Hurt Scholars Program. So I hope both of those will really change in very positive ways the kind of intellectual environment we have here and how Caltech will continue to reinvent itself, which it has to. Any first rate institution has to, has to hold onto its values, but it has to also reinvent itself.

Wolf (43:34): Tom, that was a great discussion of the Hurt fellows program. One of the things that is most inspiring to me when I watched it process because I saw you meeting with Bill and I could see you changing your views on what it meant and how it should be. It was an incredible evolution between a donor and a president, nothing like I've ever seen before, but the two of you together did not just want to bring different ideas and different people together. You specifically are invoking and involving the humanities and social science. And the early Hurt scholars—I believe one of them is an economist—the early Hurt scholars are doing this on day one. And that is super exciting to me and something I think is in some ways unique to Caltech.

Rosenbaum (44:15): I think it is. And the humanistic viewpoint is going to be essential to the success of this program. And we attract humanists as you know at Caltech who are interested in that interface with the sciences, but often don't have the opportunity to actually connect. And this is a way to do that. The beauty of this program is we don't actually know what the product is going to be in its particular nature, but we have confidence that the interactions will be valuable.

Wolf (44:47): Well, and to me, it's the ultimate. It doesn't have the "I feel dumb" component, but it definitely has the "I need someone to talk to" component. I am personally really excited about what's going to come out of this. I loved the phrase that you used, which something to the effect of encouraging the choreography because you can't tell scientists or humanists or any other faculty member exactly what to do and to research, but you can create the ecosystem that you've created for them. That's very special.

Rosenbaum (45:11): That's exactly right. And I would say the teaching element of this is really important as well. I've co-taught some courses, not with humanists—well, maybe one course on sports science and society in my University of Chicago career—and when you teach a course with someone with a different background, it's not only the contents that's different. It's how they approach the pedagogy, how they approach the analysis of what they're doing. And you just learn so much. I have real confidence that not only will our students benefit from these interactions, but the faculty members themselves may see a translation of what they've learnt in the interactions into their actual research.

Wolf (45:57): When I hear you talk about the Rothenberg Innovation Initiative and the Hurt Scholars Program, I'm blown away by what they can do. We don't have time on this podcast, I would love to ask you about the Bren space-based solar program, about the Merkin Translational Institute. Richard Merkin has just provided an incredible gift for that. You did talk about the Resnick Sustainability Institute, about the Chen Neuroscience Institute. I'm sure there's others that I'm forgetting. We have been blessed by donors who have seen the vision that you've been describing and have wanted to make a big statement and a big impact. That must also be something you're very proud of.

Rosenbaum (46:31): Philanthropists of vision buy into an institution's values, provide the resources that lower the barriers to discovery, and let us run free. And all the examples you cite are exactly that way. The space-based solar power project is one where we could solve the world's energy problems if it works. It's ambitious, it is difficult. We will learn a huge amount no matter what, but we could also contribute in this fundamental way of harnessing solar energy from space and beaming it down to Earth 24/7. The Merkin Translational Research Institute will bring together, is bringing together, individuals across Caltech to translate their ideas into these commercial products, particularly in medicine. And in fact, it supported ambitious work at the beginning of the pandemic where scientists here could almost turn on a dime and use their ideas to help create vaccines or interventions that would help address the terrible aspects of the disease. The Cherng Medical Engineering Department, the Chen Neuroscience Institute, all bring together incredible scientists and students from across all six divisions of the Institute to bring their talents to bear on important problems.

It's been a signature aspect, I think, of how Caltech is able to advance. And then of course, we also bring in the huge support of the federal government and the combination of the two is really the key to our future success.

Wolf (48:18): It is pretty amazing how each one of these initiatives involves that very, very, very visible interdisciplinary aspect. I think of neuroeconomists working with neurobiologists in the Chen Institute. I think of aeronautics and fluid mechanics engineering professors working with biologists and molecular biologists in the Cherng Medical Engineering Division. I think about physicists and chemists working together and applied physicists working together in space-based solar. There is something that is interesting about the interdisciplinary aspect of each one of those.

Rosenbaum (48:53): I think that's partly the attraction of investing in Caltech, is that we can do that here. And there's a capacious view of the science and the engineering as a whole. If you look at the Chen Neuroscience Institute, we go all the way from individual neurons, to assemblies of neurons, to medical interventions, to thinking about how people make decisions—in one institute, and that is the strength of Caltech.

Wolf (49:20): Wonderful. Fantastic.

I want to give you the opportunity to close with a final question, which is, as you look forward to the next decade, what is your most hopeful outcome for science in the next 10 years?

Rosenbaum (49:31): When I think of science, and maybe this goes back to thinking about how I got into science, there's a wonderment about the world and kids have this. My hope for science is that adults, all citizens of the world, will be able to enrich their lives through understanding their societies, understanding nature, understanding the universe, using the tools of science. That's a big task and we'll do it in small steps. But if we can somehow keep that wonder and keep people attached to that wonder, for me, physics is understanding how the world works around me and it's constantly beguiling because of that. And it also gives some purpose to one's life. So I hope for that enrichment and that purpose and that we can do a somewhat better job anyway of marshaling science and engineering to those ends.

Wolf (50:41): Tom, I know with your leadership and that of others, that great institutions like Caltech will get there. Thank you so much for being on The Lonely Idea.

Rosenbaum (50:47): Thank you.

Conclusion (50:49): The Lonely Idea is produced at Caltech. Learn more about Caltech innovators and their research on our website at www.caltech.edu or connect with Caltech on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.