Inside the Community

Laura Marcus, wife of Caltech professor of chemistry and Nobel laureate Rudy Marcus, set out to write a series of articles on people who made up the Caltech community. Few of her subjects had been written on at any length before, hence "untold stories," which required oral history interviews and background research to bring out those stories. The result was twenty-five articles, which appeared in Caltech publications Caltech Women's Club Bulletin, Caltech News, and On Campus over a twelve-year period (1987-99). Now compiled in one volume and edited by their son Kenneth Marcus and Rudy, Inside the Community: Untold Stories of Women and Men of Caltech comprises a rich array of subjects that chart an era of remarkable growth not only for Caltech but of the community of scholars and their partners who contributed so decisively to Caltech's success.
Among the people Laura interviewed were Professor of Mathematics Olga Taussky-Todd, one of the first female tenured professors in Caltech history, and Mabel Beckman, wife of legendary Caltech graduate, professor, inventor and donor, Arnold Beckman. There are articles on one of the founders of Caltech, Professor of Chemistry Arthur Amos Noyes, and on the week in Stockholm, Sweden, when Rudy Marcus won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1992. Spouses of faculty members and Caltech presidents figure prominently among Laura's subjects, many of whom were members of the Caltech Women's Club, to which Laura belonged.
The book also includes eight further articles that she wrote during this period, all of which reflect her ongoing interests in education and community. Only one of these was published previously: on African American Professor of Psychology at Pasadena City College, Barbara Phillips Turner, a member of the Friends of the Pasadena Commission on the Study of Women, of which Laura was also a member. With a foreword by Professor of Chemistry Harry Gray and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Provost David Tirrell, and illustrated with thirty-one photographs, drawings and paintings, this collection of articles shows how the women and men of Caltech, and their families, formed an extraordinary research community of science and engineering, whose members shared common interests and social bonds.