Moving On

The appointment of Marvin L. Goldberger, president of the California Institute of Technology, as the director of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton brings credit to both institutions as well as to the parting president.

Goldberger takes special pride in the fact that during the decade in which he administered Caltech it grew in prestige but not in numbers. The student body of 1,800, about half of them pursuing graduate studies, and the faculty of 266 professors remain about what they were when he came to Pasadena in 1978. But he can take satisfaction from one measure of growth: the enlargement of the endowment from $155 million to its present level of $390 million.

From 1980 to 1986 Goldberger made a significant off-campus contribution as the founding chairman of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on International Security and Arms Control, with alternating meetings with Soviet scientists in Moscow and in Washington. It was a measure of the leadership that he has given beyond his field of physics in seeking the international resolution of disputes.

The Institute for Advanced Study has an active faculty of 22 and 170 visiting members who spend a year in research. Albert Einstein went there after a brief time at Caltech, and so have many other Caltech faculty members. For Goldberger it will be a homecoming of sorts, for he was on the faculty of nearby Princeton University when he was called to Caltech.