On August 10 Caltech celebrated the ground breaking for the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement. The Ginsburg Center will accelerate the exploration of quantum phenomena across all scales as well as the invention of instruments to measure these phenomena with unprecedented sensitivity. These concepts and tools, in turn, will enable researchers to advance fundamental research across many scientific disciplines. The new building was made possible thanks to a naming gift from Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg of Rancho Palos Verdes, California, and a major grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to create the Kip Thorne Laboratories, which will be housed in the Ginsburg Center. Additional funding from a generous anonymous donor enabled Caltech to establish the Institute for Fundamental Quantum Sciences, a research hub that will span the Ginsburg Center as well as spaces in current facilities. The placement of these facilities adjacent to one another will quicken discovery by strengthening formal partnerships as well as spontaneous interactions among Caltech’s diverse community of quantum researchers, including computer scientists, engineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists.
Professor Fiona A. Harrison, Assemblymember Chris Holden, President Thomas F. Rosenbaum, Charlotte Ginsburg, Allen Ginsburg, Mayor Victor Gordo, and Provost David A. Tirrell
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Caltech president Thomas F. Rosenbaum, the Sonja and William Davidow Presidential Chair and professor of physics, described how quantum science developed before World War II led to the world we know today in terms of transistors, computers, magnetic resonance imaging, and many other technologies we take for granted.
“We now stand on the verge of a second quantum revolution, and it is this vision that inspires Charlotte and Allen,” he said. “It includes, of course, the technologies and the understanding that will come from recording gravitational waves, from measuring brain waves, from creating quantum computers, from developing new materials. But if you talk to Allen and Charlotte, they light up when they talk about educating the next generation—the importance of people, the importance of collaboration. And that is what the Ginsburg Center will do. It will create knowledge, and it will be a centerpiece of our efforts in quantum studies on campus.”
Preliminary rendering of the Dr. Allen and Charlotte Ginsburg Center for Quantum Precision Measurement Credit: HOK
Read more about the groundbreaking event and the new building in the Caltech Media story.
Slated to open in fall 2025, the Ginsburg Center will be located on the north side of California Boulevard, adjacent to Caltech’s physics, mathematics, astronomy, and engineering buildings. Transparent façades inflected inward on the center’s south and west sides will suggest a prism or the bending of spacetime—an allusion to the research and education that will take place inside.
