A Legacy of Innovation
A timeline of Rice’s research and innovation milestones
Edgar Odell Lovett speaks to the importance of research
After returning from his tour of universities in Europe, Lovett communicates to the board of governors that “the Rice Institute would aspire to university standing of the highest level, seeking ‘to attain that high place through the research work of its early professors.’”
First government research grant received
The physics department, overseen by Tom Bonner ’34, receives a grant from the Office of Naval Research for work on nuclear physics.
R1 computer takes shape
Zevi Salzburg, John Kilpatrick and Martin Graham begin working on the room-sized R1 vacuum tube computer, which becomes fully operational in 1961.
Van de Graaff particle accelerator acquired
The announcement is made that a million-dollar Van de Graaff accelerator for fundamental nuclear physics research will be installed at Rice; it will be the only such equipment in the Southwest at the time.
Houston becomes “Space City USA”
Rice alumnus and board chairman George R. Brown ’20 helps ensure that Houston will be named the site of NASA’s new Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center), continuing NASA’s longtime partnership with Rice.
John F. Kennedy delivers “moonshot” speech
In a Rice Stadium address, Kennedy commits the U.S. to landing men on the moon by 1970. The “moonshot” speech becomes one of his most famous speeches, establishing Rice as one of the pivotal institutions for technological advancement and scientific progress.
Rice establishes nation’s first space science
department
Alexander Dessler is hired to lead the nation’s first dedicated department of space science in order to do research and training for NASA, which provides its first building; the department is initially for graduate students only.
Rice designs and engineers world’s first artificial heart
William Akers and David Hellums begin working on an artificial heart in 1963, in collaboration with researchers in the Texas Medical Center. In May 1965, surgeons at Baylor College of Medicine implant a working model. In 1966, Rice and Baylor receive the first-ever NIH grant for artificial heart research to continue their work.
Digital signal processing developed
C. Sidney Burrus ’57 and Tom Parks launch their first course on digital signal processing, or DSP: the transformation of data to extract or transmit information. DSP enables numerous technologies we now take for granted, from cellphones to imaging satellites.
Rice’s lunar dust detector goes to the moon
Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the moon. They carry with them a lunar dust detector designed by Rice Professor Brian O’Brien.
Ion detection device left on the moon
On a later Apollo mission, NASA astronauts leave behind an ion detection device built by Rice Professor John Freeman. Freeman placed a tiny Rice University pennant inside its heat shield to jokingly “claim” a small part of the moon for Rice.
Computer science department founded
Mathematics Professor Ken Kennedy ’67 founds Rice’s computer science department. In 1987, he creates the Rice Computer and Information Technology Institute, which is renamed in his honor in 2007.
Elected to the Association of American Universities
Rice is elected to the AAU, joining a roster of only 66 of the most prestigious and influential research universities. Membership in the AAU is seen as a mark of distinction
due to the organization’s emphasis on research and
academic excellence.
Smalley and Curl win Nobel Prize
In 1986, Richard E. Smalley and Robert Curl ’54 discover the buckminsterfullerene, or “buckyball,” a pure carbon cluster, which ushers in the era of nanoscale technology. In 1996, they win a Nobel Prize for the discovery and characterization of fullerenes, the third elemental form of carbon after graphite and diamond.
Richards-Kortum wins MacArthur “genius grant”
Rebecca Richards-Kortum wins Rice’s first MacArthur Fellowship for “developing point-of-care diagnostic technologies for use in low-resource settings and inspiring the next generation of engineers.”
McDaniel wins Pulitzer Prize
Caleb McDaniel, associate professor and incoming chair of the Department of History, wins Rice’s first Pulitzer for his book “Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America.”
Slave Voyages database moves to Rice
The world’s largest repository of information about the trans-Atlantic and intra-American slave trades is moved, for the first time in its 20-year history, from Emory University to Rice under the direction of Daniel Domingues da Silva.
Rice earns its first ARPA-H award
Omid Veiseh and his team win the second-highest ARPA-H award in the country to fast-track development and testing of a new implant that aims to dramatically improve immunotherapy outcomes for patients with ovarian, pancreatic and other difficult-to-treat cancers.
A special thank you to University Historian Portia Hopkins, archivist and librarian Norie Guthrie and retired Centennial Historian Melissa Kean ’96, ’00 for sourcing Rice’s research milestones.