Commencement speaker Harold Varmus, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and the former director of the National Institutes of Health, urged graduates to imagine themselves as players in the grand tradition of scientific inquiry.

Equipped with a mallet and ceremonial gong, these Lloyd House undergrads came out swinging. The instrument was struck every time a graduating friend’s name was called.

Friends and family of the graduates flocked to the Caltech Bookstore table for gifts, souvenirs, and bouquets of flowers.

Faculty from the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, clad in ceremonial regalia, stroll across the campus toward the Institute’s 109th commencement exercises on Beckman Mall. From left are Jack Roberts, Steve Mayo, Fred Anson, Richard Roberts, Doug Rees, and Mitchio Okumura.

Graduate student John Dabiri received his master’s degree in aeronautics and will continue on at Caltech to perform work toward his PhD in bioengineering.

Senior Oana Tocoian received her BS in engineering and applied science.

Commencement 2003

Even the clouds above Beckman Mall couldn’t dampen spirits as the degree candidates came marching in. Caltech’s 109th commencement ceremony opened with the traditional organ prelude by alum Les Deutsch and processional music by the Convocations Brass and Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Bill Bing.

Ben Rosen, chairman of the Board of Trustees, greeted the crowd and highlighted several standout events of 2002–03: the capital campaign launched last fall; an uncertain economy and campuswide financial challenges; purchase of the former St. Luke’s Hospital property; and signing of a new five-year contract to manage JPL. He then introduced keynote speaker Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate and the president and chief executive officer of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

Speaking at Caltech felt like a homecoming, Varmus noted, with his scientific accomplishments having been “firmly grounded” in previous work by Institute researchers. At a past commencement address at Harvard, he said, he had spoken about how “science serves society.” Here at Caltech, he would focus on the inverse message—how society serves science—using as a starting point Vittore Carpaccio’s painting Saint Augustine in His Study.

Carpaccio placed the fifth-century philosopher in the artist’s own early 16th-century setting, surrounded by books, manuscripts, and other scholarly trappings. In the background, religious objects show the church—the “society” of Carpaccio’s time—as the source of Augustine’s support, both “his NIH and his Caltech.” The painting seems to imply the patronage of a beneficent donor with “the self-confidence to provide intellectual freedom”—a situation that reversed itself just a century after the painting, when the church labeled Galileo a heretic.

Fortunately, current U.S. political and societal support for science is very favorable, Varmus said. “Still, if we are to maintain a beneficial relationship between science and its patrons, we need to recall the Galileos and be sensitive to early signs of potentially damaging change.” These signs, he said, may be emerging—massive tax cuts, a weak economy, fears of terrorism and war—and, he believes, such a political climate “is unlikely to bring out the best in science.”

However, on such a celebratory occasion as commencement, Varmus proposed a more positive way to assess the climate of scientific support: to ask whether research remains “an exhilarating experience, not just a grim duty.” As illustrations of “the spirit that society should strive to sustain in its scientists,” he cited astronomer and poet Rebecca Elson, who died at age 39 in 1999, and his friend Ira Herskowitz, a biochemist and 1967 Caltech alum, who died in April at 56. Elson eloquently captured the wonders of astronomical research in poems and essays published after her death. Similarly, Herskowitz, a renowned UC San Francisco professor, never lost a “simple sense of joy” over his insightful experiments in yeast genetics. These two lives, like Carpaccio’s portrait, he said, “illustrate the state of science in our society,” examples of that fragile yet remarkably synergistic relationship.

In drawing to a close, Varmus had the grads imagine themselves in Carpaccio’s painting, and what thoughts might be in their minds—perhaps thoughts similar to ones credited to Augustine in another Renaissance depiction, this one by Botticelli. In that portrait, wrote the 16th-century art historian Vasari, the philosopher has the wise appearance of those who continually ponder “topics of the highest order and the greatest difficulty.”

Varmus concluded, “This is my wish for each of you today: that society will treat you well enough that you can devote at least some of your thoughts to ‘topics of the highest order and the greatest difficulty.’

“Thanks for listening, and for thinking.”

Following Varmus’s speech, the Glee Clubs, led by Donald Caldwell, gave a rousing rendition of Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” before President Baltimore stepped up to begin conferring degrees. Emotions ran high as the nearly 500 candidates each had their moment on stage—for many, if not most, the crowning achievement of their academic career to date.

When every diploma had been received, Baltimore announced the winners of awards for academic excellence and civic contributions and also congratulated parents on their role in their children’s success. Addressing the graduates, he then voiced concern that the number of Americans trained in science and engineering is dropping far behind demand, and noted that Caltech graduates’ “special understanding of the role of technology in society” uniquely positions them to help reverse the trend. “It is not institutional pride or parochialism, but patriotism that forces us to ask how we can get more of America to do what Caltech does so well,” Baltimore said. Exhorting the grads to help their fellow citizens recognize the value of technology, he wished them success and happiness as he sent them into the world.

To see the 2003 Commencement program, with a list of all graduates and award winners, and video footage of the ceremony, visit http://pr.caltech.edu/commencement/03.
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