The academic seal of Rice University was designed in 1912 by
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose of Cambridge, Massachusetts, who
combined the main elements of the coats of arms of sixteen
prominent families bearing the names Rice or Houston.
Owls of Athena-symbolic of wisdom-were chosen for the charges. The
Athenian owls on the Rice seal were patterned after a design
found on a small, silver tetradrachmenon coin dating from the
middle of the 5th century B.C. Because Rice University was
dedicated by its founder to the advancement of "letters, science,
and art," these words also were incorporated into the seal.
MASCOT: OWL
When athletic activities began at The Rice Institute in 1912, the
Rice intercollegiate teams adopted the owl as their mascot. Over
the years, interpretations of the mascot have included students
dressed in owl costumes, live great horned owls, and large owl
statues of canvas and of fiberglass.
COLORS: BLUE AND GRAY
In 1912, Rice's first president, Edgar Odell Lovett, chose as the
school colors "a blue still deeper than the Oxford blue" and "the
Confederate gray, enlivened by a tinge of lavender."
ALMA MATER: RICE'S HONOR
All for Rice's Honor, we will fight on.
We will be fighting when this day is done;
And when the dawn comes breaking.
We'll be fighting on, Rice, for the Gray and Blue.
We will be loyal, to Rice be true.
(To the tune of "Our Director March,"
written by Ben H. Mitchell '24 in 1922)
A NOBLE ACCOMPLISHMENT
Robert Woodrow Wilson '57 won the Nobel Prize in physics (with
fellow researcher Arno Penzias) in 1978 for discovering residual
cosmic background radiation generated by the big bang, thought to
be the explosion that created the universe some 15 billion years
ago.
RECENT RANKINGS
Rice was ranked 2nd among "Best College Buys" by Money magazine, September 1995.
Rice was ranked 2nd among "Best College Values" by U.S. News & World Report, September 25, 1995.
Rice was ranked 16th among "Best National Universities" by U.S. News & World Report, September 18, 1995.
SOME RECENT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
In 1985, Richard E. Smalley, the Gene and Norman
Hackerman Professor of Chemistry, and chemistry professor
Robert Curl discovered carbon 60 (otherwise known as
buckminsterfullerenes), a third form of carbon seen as
geodesic dome-shaped spheres. In 1995, Smalley created a
method for making carbon tubes whose diameters are so
tiny that one million would stack just one millimeter high.
These findings are central to work in the interdisciplinary
field of nanoscale science and technology - a field with
significant potential impact on human society in the 21st
century.
Also in 1995, associate physics professor Randall Hulet
and his team Jeffrey Tollett (1995 Rice doctoral graduate),
Curtis Bradley and Cass Sackett (graduate students) created
a new form of matter - one postulated by Albert Einstein 71
years ago but, until now, never proven. The Bose-Einstein
condensate shows that by cooling gaseous atoms to a
temperature barely above absolute zero, the atoms slow
down so much they condense into a cloud, causing
individual atoms to lose their identities and behave
collectively. This better understanding of atomic matter has
substantial implications for new technologies.