Altadena filled up with people who worked on rockets and particles and telescopes. That is not an accident, and the reasons are more interesting than proximity to a campus.
Historian David Zierler will discuss how Altadena became a home to physics and physicists, and what that intellectual legacy is today, in a talk presented by Altadena Heritage on Friday, August 28, at the Eaton Fire Collaboratory, 540 W. Woodbury Road in Altadena. Doors open at 7 p.m. The lecture runs from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Registration is online.
Zierler is the Ronald and Maxine Linde Director of the Caltech Heritage Project, which he has led since 2021. He came to the job by an unusual route. Working as an oral historian at the American Institute of Physics from 2019 to 2021, he interviewed close to 500 leading physicists and noticed that nearly all of them had studied at Caltech, worked there, or had a formative collaboration with someone who had. He holds a doctorate in history from Temple University and is the author of “The Invention of Ecocide,” on Agent Orange and the scientists who reshaped environmental thinking.
The venue carries its own weight. The Collaboratory opened in October 2025 at 540 W. Woodbury Road as the Eaton Fire Collaborative’s first permanent hub — part warehouse where fire-affected residents can pick up what they need, part meeting ground for the organizations working on recovery.
A lecture about the town’s scientists, delivered in a building put up to help the town recover.
David Zierler speaks Friday, August 28. Doors open at 7 p.m.; lecture from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Eaton Fire Collaboratory, 540 W. Woodbury Road in Altadena. Presented by Altadena Heritage. Registration is available at altadenaheritage.org.
