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.
