Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory

The Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), was a research institute created in 1926, at first specializing in aeronautics research. In 1930, Hungarian scientist Theodore von Kármán accepted the directorship of the lab and emigrated to the United States. Under his leadership, work on rockets began there in 1936. GALCIT was the first—and from 1936 to 1940 the only—university-based rocket research center. Based on GALCIT's JATO project at the time, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established under a contract with the United States Army in November 1943.

In 1961 the GALCIT acronym was retained while the name changed to Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories at the California Institute of Technology. In 2006, during the Directorship of Ares Rosakis, GALCIT was once again renamed, taking on the new name Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (while continuing to maintain the acronym GALCIT) in order to reflect its vigorous re-engagement with space engineering and with JPL.

Daniel Guggenheim and his son, Harry Guggenheim (an aviator) established the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics on June 16, 1926. Between 1926 and 1930 the fund disbursed $3 million, making grants that established schools or research centers at New York University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Washington, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Syracuse University, Northwestern University, the University of Akron, and the California Institute of Technology. It was the Guggenheims who, along with Caltech president Robert Andrews Millikan, convinced von Kármán to emigrate to the United States and become director of GALCIT. Eventually, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) became so concerned about GALCIT's growing influence over West coast aviation, it erected the Ames Laboratory in Sunnyvale, California in part to deter an ever-widening aeronautical gap that had formed between NACA and GALCIT.

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