Many people would recognise Harvard, Oxford and Stanford as being among the most prestigious educational institutions in the world.

But there is one small university, located less than 30 kilometres from the bright lights of Hollywood, that is better than them all, according to the latest ranking of world universities.

The California Institute of Technology, also known as Caltech, has been named overnight as the world's No.1 university in the Times Higher Education world university rankings.

It is the fourth year in a row that Caltech, a specialised science and engineering university, has trumped other education institutions, that are perhaps more internationally recognised, to take home the top ranking.

The privately run, not-for-profit university is relatively tiny when compared with some other institutions: it has just 977 undergraduates, 1204 graduate students and a faculty of 300 professors at its Pasadena campus, according to the latest figures.

But it certainly packs a punch in terms of its alumni.

The university has produced 32 Nobel prize laureates, including William Shockley, the co-inventor of the solid state transistor and known as father of Silicon Valley, while 70 graduates have won the US National Medal of Science or the US Medal of Technology and Innovation, both prestigious awards bestowed by the US president.

Among its former faculty members is Charles Richter, inventor of the scale that quantifies the magnitude of earthquakes, and Theodore von Kármán, the first head of what is now NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The laboratory, the leading US centre for the robotic exploration of the solar system, is still a division of the university.

One alumnus, Stanislav Smirnov, in 2010 won the Fields Medal, regarded as the greatest award a mathematician can receive, while both Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking were visiting professors at Caltech.

The university is also referenced in popular culture, including on the US sitcom The Big Bang Theory, in which the four male lead characters all work at the university.

Caltech has a fierce rivalry with the Cambridge-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, which was ranked sixth on the Times Higher Education world university rankings.

In fact, students from both universities have been known to go to great lengths to carry out pranks on their rivals.

The Caltech Alumni Association says that pranks "are a key part of the institute's history and identity", and, in 2005, a group of Caltech students flew across the country to leave their mark on MIT during its campus preview weekend for prospective students.

The Caltech pranksters used a laser to project CALTECH on to MIT's tallest building, launched a blimp emblazoned with CIT in the dome of one of MIT's main buildings, and draped a sign over the main sign of the university that said: "That Other Institute of Technology".

They also handed out 1000 free T-shirts to prospective MIT students that had "MIT" printed on the front, and on the back, "Because not everyone can go to Caltech".

The following year, MIT students hit back by stealing Caltech's cherished Fleming Cannon, a landmark on the campus, and transporting it across the country to MIT's campus.