Rodman W. Paul Oral History Interview

Interviewed by Carol Bugé

Abstract

Interview in 1982 with Rodman W. Paul, Edward S. Harkness Professor of History, emeritus. A historian specializing in the American West, particularly western mining, Paul joined Caltech’s Humanities Division in 1947 and was instrumental in building up its history department. He comments in this interview on the state of the Humanities Division under its longtime chairman Hallett Smith in the 1950s and 1960s; on his efforts to build the history department; on the division’s evolution in the 1970s under Robert Huttenback (see addendum) into the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences; on the eclipse of the behavioral sciences and the weakness of the division’s literature department; on his relationship with the Huntington Library and the unsuccessful attempt by the Bancroft Library to recruit him; on the upheavals of the 1960s in the academic world; and on his service on various faculty committees, particularly the institute’s Aims and Goals Committee. The interview includes recollections of Robert A. and Greta Millikan, Lee DuBridge, Alan Sweezy, Earnest Watson, Richard Chace Tolman, and the political controversies of the 1950s (Linus Pauling, H. S. Tsien, J. Robert Oppenheimer), as well as his analysis of later campus and divisional trends.

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Rodman W. Paul Oral History Interview, interviewed by Carol Bugé, Caltech Archives Oral History Project, February 5, 1982, February 17, 1982, http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Paul_R.