Caltech’s Situation Evaluated

I would like to compliment The Times and staff writer Edmund Newton on the excellent article “Hard Times for Science” (Jan. 12). It certainly gives the right flavor of current times at Caltech.

I would like to make one factual correction, however. I was quoted as saying that because of a gap in funding from a federal agency, my graduate students had not been paid for 14 months.

What I said in a telephone interview was that my one graduate student had not been supported for 14 months, meaning that we had no government funds to support the work.

During that time, I paid my students’ salaries out of discretionary funds from Caltech (running that account into the red!) But none of my students missed a paycheck.

Ironically, one source of contract funds that “dried up” was the state Office of Competitive Technology, a state agency chartered to “create new jobs in California.”

That office awarded us a grant in January, 1991, then told us they had all their funds for new work “taken back” by the Legislature in August, 1991, to cover the budget crisis in Sacramento, so we received nothing.

The graduate student working on that project finds he must earn his salary as a part-time teaching assistant at Caltech, leaving him less time for research.

We may yet “create jobs for Californians” with the work, but it will take a little longer!

WILLIAM BRIDGES

Professor of Engineering

and Applied Science

Caltech