MIT-Caltech origin story (Noyes-Walker-Millikan)

Tom's explanation of why MIT emphasizes practical engineering ("mens et manus") while Caltech became a pure-science institution. Used to set up the "stress at MIT is self-inflicted" point and as historical context for MIT's teaching mission.

There's a guy named Arthur Amos Noyes who was one of the greatest physical chemists in the United States. He had headed the MIT chemistry department. He had studied in Germany, because back then around the turn of the 20th century, all the great scientists had to go to Germany to study science — that's where all the quantum mechanics gurus were. If you look at the MIT curriculum from the 1880s and 1890s, you were required to take German because it was the language of science, and all the important papers were written in German. So Noyes went to Germany, came back, was the greatest physical chemist, and became president of MIT.