Lee DuBridge: Then along came World War II and, of course, the Institute was just transformed into
a war research and training institution. It had a big naval training unit and a large
- two large, three large - research programs which were very successful and very well
thought of by the military services.
Then the end of the war... During the war, of course, Millikan reached the age
of seventy-four or something - seventy-three - but he says "This is no time to change
leadership. Who would come to Caltech? They're all busy with war work and anybody
we would want is already engaged and we can't disrupt war enterprises by trying to
organize a new, a better institution." So, he just stayed on as president.
But, fortunately, Jim Page and two or three trustees realized that this was going
to be a big enterprise during the war with huge amounts of money compared to what
they had before and would have to have a new business manager and they'd have to have
somebody to take care of personnel and they got Ernest Watson who was kind of an assistant
to Millikan and he became really a kind of vice president and the general manager
of the Institute.
And then they got a new financial manager who was extremely good, George Green, and
so they swam through the war very, very beautifully.
