Caltech and The Huntington Have a Long History of Sharing
A long focal-length telescope from Francesco Bianchini's Hesperi et Phosphori Nova Phaenomena, 1728. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Caltech and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, whose campuses are less than a mile apart, have had a close relationship since Caltech's George Ellery Hale encouraged railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington to transform Huntington's library, art, and botanical collections into a research center nearly a century ago. In fact, The Huntington is celebrating its centenary this fall, and in 2020 Caltech will celebrate the 100th anniversary of its naming.
In addition to the new Research Institute for the History of Science and Technology, recent and ongoing partnerships between The Huntington and HSS include:
The Caltech-Huntington Humanities Collaborations, an ongoing series of interdisciplinary research projects that bring together Caltech faculty members and Huntington residential research fellows to consider topics ranging from the role of violence in political order to the ways technologies have affected social change
The Eleanor Searle Visiting Professorship in History, awarded to a distinguished historian whose interests lie in the history of science and technology (British historian John Styles will hold the position for this upcoming academic year)
A recent grant from the Mellon Foundation for a new collaborative initiative in visual culture that has added new Caltech course offerings, as well as artists-in-residence and guest lecturers, and will ultimately bring a visual culture professor onto the faculty.
These kinds of partnership, between an independent research library and a research institute, are rare, says Steve Hindle, director of research at The Huntington. “I think we are offering a model of how two very different institutions might actually be brought into a common vision.”