Where does Columbia fit in the firmament of great American universities?
I entered Columbia College as a freshman in the fall of 1960. I’ve never been able to cut the umbilical cord. I love the place and admit to my own biases about it. But you don’t have to bleed Columbia blue to realize that it is among the top 10 research universities in the world. It has, of course, been a leader in the transmission of knowledge to its undergraduates and graduate students, but it also has been one of the world’s great leaders in the production of new knowledge and new ideas. Consider a few among thousands of possible examples: the discovery of radar, which was led by I. I. Rabi’s work during World War II here and at the Rad Lab at MIT; the invention of the FM radio; the APGAR test; the Pap smear; the building of shoulder prosthetics; the discovery of the gene for the sense of smell; basic discoveries in neuroscience; and the drug Bacitracin. The laser was first discovered [as the maser] at Columbia by physicist Charles Townes and his son-in-law, Arthur Schawlow [at Bell
