SCIENCE WATCH : Caltech’s Champ

What manner of man was Lee Alvin DuBridge, president emeritus of Caltech, dead last Sunday at the age of 92? The brilliance of the scientist and science policy adviser is what the country knew best. But Caltech, where DuBridge held office from 1946 to 1968, knew him for other qualities as well. When he returned to Pasadena after serving as science adviser to President Richard Nixon and was spotted for the first time in the dining room of the Athenaeum, Caltech’s faculty club, the entire room rose in a standing ovation. DuBridge was not only admired, he was loved.

His was the “Los Alamos generation” of physicists. They were the giants who developed radar, built the bomb, won the war and then proceeded to fashion, for a nation become overnight a superpower, a science policy that left the world in awe. DuBridge was a science adviser to three presidents during an era when physics was important as never before.

That era is over. DuBridge, who astutely managed an extraordinary expansion of Caltech, is missed with a mixture of mourning for the demeanor of the man and nostalgia for the abundance of the era. But DuBridge himself, unassuming, ready to chat in the Athenaeum with any and all down to the end of his life, would never have claimed a whole era as his own.

“See you soon,” a lunchtime companion said to the nonagenarian not long ago.

“Well,” DuBridge replied with a wry smile, “we’ll have to wait and see about that.” DuBridge knew both who he was and when he was. No wonder they cheered him.