Here are the things Dr. Allen Ginsburg loves about Caltech: the campus, with its storied architecture, the olive trees, the neighborhoods and the history that surrounds it.
But on Thursday, Aug. 10, as Ginsburg and his wife Charlotte held shiny orange shovels to break ground on a building that will bear their name, the couple said they were most enamored with the meeting of the minds their gift will spark.
“Regardless of what you’ve done in life, where you’ve gone, and whatever you expect to do, you really haven’t done your job unless you’ve enlisted young people in the world with beautiful minds to get started as early as you can,” Ginsburg said. “It is the greatest contribution to humanity that we can make, and to the planet.”
Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo, Assemblymember Chris Holden and Caltech leaders on Thursday joined about 200 people at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement.
Beyond the shovels and the speeches through, Caltech officials and leaders see the importance of the center as much broader, once it’s fully developed.
They see the site as a fledgling center for quantum physics — the study of the fundamental building blocks of matter and energy. Some day, new knowledge gained here about the behaviors of atoms and subatomic particles, and how to manipulate them, will usher in a potentially transformative technological era, according to Caltech.
The four-story building will house research offices, meeting rooms and collaborative space, with a basement level of state-of-the-art laboratories that will gather postdoctoral scholars, graduate students and scientists and engineers in one pioneering playground. Fully funded by the Ginsburg gift and a grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation, the multi-million center is set to open in the fall of 2025.
Charles Pankow Builders of Pasadena will lead construction, following the design of the architectural firm HOK, the company that designed…
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