The giant cancer tube and the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory

Fifty years ago the W. K. Kellogg Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology was founded as a center of radiation therapy. Seven years later it abandoned medicine to pursue its development into what is today an internationally known center of nuclear physics. The behind‐the‐scenes negotiations surrounding the laboratory’s founding, early history and abrupt change in direction give unusual insight into the administrative style of Robert A. Millikan, Caltech’s chief executive. The early history of the laboratory was shaped in important ways by this Nobel Prize winning physicist’s successes and failures in raising support money. His efforts, including a 13‐year long attempt to take a horse farm away from the University of California, reveal why Millikan was so successful as head of Caltech, and show that it was just as difficult then to get support for pure research in a new field of physics as it is today.

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