The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a
private
Private or privates may refer to:
Music
* " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation''
* Private (band), a Denmark-based band
* "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...
research university
A research university or a research-intensive university is a university that is committed to research as a central part of its mission. They are the most important sites at which knowledge production occurs, along with "intergenerational kno ...
in
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most populous city in the state, behind Boston, ...
. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern
technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
and
science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
applied science
Applied science is the use of the scientific method and knowledge obtained via conclusions from the method to attain practical goals. It includes a broad range of disciplines such as engineering and medicine. Applied science is often contrasted ...
and
engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
. MIT is one of three private land grant universities in the United States, the others being
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
and
Tuskegee University
Tuskegee University (Tuskegee or TU), formerly known as the Tuskegee Institute, is a private, historically black land-grant university in Tuskegee, Alabama. It was founded on Independence Day in 1881 by the state legislature.
The campus was d ...
. The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the
Charles River
The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...
, and encompasses a number of major off-campus facilities such as the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the Bates Center, and the Haystack Observatory, as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad and
Whitehead Institute
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...
Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
winners, and 8
Fields Medal
The Fields Medal is a prize awarded to two, three, or four mathematicians under 40 years of age at the International Congress of the International Mathematical Union (IMU), a meeting that takes place every four years. The name of the award ho ...
MacArthur Fellows
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 ind ...
astronaut
An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...
Hertz Fellowship
The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation is an American non-profit organization that awards fellowships to Ph.D. students in the applied physical, biological and engineering sciences. The fellowship provides $250,000 of support over five years. The ...
s than any other university.
History
Foundation and vision
In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the
Massachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ...
incorporation
Incorporation may refer to:
* Incorporation (business), the creation of a corporation
* Incorporation of a place, creation of municipal corporation such as a city or county
* Incorporation (academic), awarding a degree based on the student having ...
of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers, was signed by
John Albion Andrew
John Albion Andrew (May 31, 1818 – October 30, 1867) was an American lawyer and politician from Massachusetts. He was elected in 1860 as the 25th Governor of Massachusetts, serving between 1861 and 1866, and led the state's contributions to ...
, the
governor of Massachusetts
The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the chief executive officer of the government of Massachusetts. The governor is the head of the state cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the commonwealth's military forces.
Massachusetts ...
, on April 10, 1861.
Rogers, a graduate of
William and Mary
William and Mary often refers to:
* The joint reign of William III of England (II of Scotland) and Mary II of England (and Scotland)
* William and Mary style, a furniture design common from 1700 to 1725 named for the couple
William and Mary may ...
and professor at
UVA
UVA most often refers to:
* Ultraviolet A, a type of ultraviolet radiation
* University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States
Uva or UVA may also refer to:
Places
* Uva, Missouri, an unincorpora ...
, wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a
professional school
Professional development is learning to earn or maintain professional credentials such as academic degrees to formal coursework, attending conferences, and informal learning opportunities situated in practice. It has been described as intensive ...
, but a combination with elements of both professional and
liberal education
A liberal education is a system or course of education suitable for the cultivation of a free (Latin: ''liber'') human being. It is based on the medieval concept of the liberal arts or, more commonly now, the liberalism of the Age of Enlightenment ...
,Lewis 1949, p. 8. proposing that:
The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.
The Rogers Plan reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories.
Early developments
Two days after MIT was chartered, the first battle of the
Civil War
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...
broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT's first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes" and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College, which developed as the
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...
. In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in the Back Bay.
MIT was informally called "Boston Tech". The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker. Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and the size of the student body increased to more than one thousand.
The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these "Boston Tech" years, MIT faculty and alumni rebuffed
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
president (and former MIT faculty)
Charles W. Eliot
Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909the longest term of any Harvard president. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transfo ...
's repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School. There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving a desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. However, a 1917 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court effectively put an end to the merger scheme.
In 1916, the MIT administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge ''Bucentaur'' built for the occasion, to signify MIT's move to a spacious new campus largely consisting of filled land on a tract along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical "New Technology" campus was designed by
William W. Bosworth
William Welles Bosworth (May 8, 1869 – June 3, 1966) was an American architect whose most famous designs include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge campus, the original AT&T Building in New York City, and the Theodore N. Vail ...
and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious "Mr. Smith", starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman of
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a City (New York), city in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, the county seat, seat of Monroe County, New York, Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, New York, Buffalo, ...
, who had invented methods of film production and processing, and founded
Eastman Kodak
The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
. Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $20 million ($ million in 2015 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT.
Curricular reforms
In the 1930s, President
Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton (September 14, 1887 – June 22, 1954) was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948.
The early years (1887–1912)
Karl Taylor Compton was born in ...
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...
emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering".Lewis 1949, p. 13. Unlike
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
schools, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on
tuition
Tuition payments, usually known as tuition in American English and as tuition fees in Commonwealth English, are fees charged by education institutions for instruction or other services. Besides public spending (by governments and other public bo ...
grants
Grant or Grants may refer to:
Places
*Grant County (disambiguation)
Australia
* Grant, Queensland, a locality in the Barcaldine Region, Queensland, Australia
United Kingdom
*Castle Grant
United States
* Grant, Alabama
*Grant, Inyo County, C ...
for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.
Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at MIT that "the Institute is widely conceived as basically a vocational school", a "partly unjustified" perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities.Bourzac, Katherine "Rethinking an MIT Education: The faculty reconsiders the General Institute Requirements" ''
Technology Review
''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...
were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
and
Engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under the successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents
Howard W. Johnson
Howard Wesley Johnson (July 2, 1922 – December 12, 2009) was an American educator. He served as dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management between 1959 and 1966, president of MIT between 1966 and 1971, and chairman of the MIT Corporation (t ...
and
Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Bert Wiesner (May 30, 1915 – October 21, 1994) was a professor of electrical engineering, chosen by President John F. Kennedy as chairman of his Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). Educated at the University of Michigan, Wiesner was assoc ...
between 1966 and 1980.
Defense research
MIT's involvement in
military science
Military science is the study of military processes, institutions, and behavior, along with the study of warfare, and the theory and application of organized coercive force. It is mainly focused on theory, method, and practice of producing mil ...
surged during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. In 1941,
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...
was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across the country gathered at MIT's
Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was a microwave and radar research laboratory located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was first created in October 1940 and operated until 31 ...
, established in 1940 to assist the
British military
The British Armed Forces, also known as His Majesty's Armed Forces, are the military forces responsible for the defence of the United Kingdom, its Overseas Territories and the Crown Dependencies. They also promote the UK's wider interests, su ...
in developing
microwave
Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ran ...
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
. The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included
gyroscope
A gyroscope (from Ancient Greek γῦρος ''gŷros'', "round" and σκοπέω ''skopéō'', "to look") is a device used for measuring or maintaining orientation and angular velocity. It is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rota ...
-based and other complex
control system
A control system manages, commands, directs, or regulates the behavior of other devices or systems using control loops. It can range from a single home heating controller using a thermostat controlling a domestic boiler to large industrial c ...
s for
gunsight
A sight is an aiming device used to assist in visually aligning ranged weapons, surveying instruments or optical illumination equipments with the intended target. Sights can be a simple set or system of physical markers that have to be aligne ...
high-altitude
Altitude or height (also sometimes known as depth) is a distance measurement, usually in the vertical or "up" direction, between a reference datum and a point or object. The exact definition and reference datum varies according to the context ...
photography under
Harold Edgerton
Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4, 1990), also known as Papa Flash, was an American scientist and researcher, a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is largely credited with ...
. By the end of the war, MIT became the nation's largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $100 million ($ billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included
SAGE
Sage or SAGE may refer to:
Plants
* ''Salvia officinalis'', common sage, a small evergreen subshrub used as a culinary herb
** Lamiaceae, a family of flowering plants commonly known as the mint or deadnettle or sage family
** ''Salvia'', a large ...
and guidance systems for
ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a type of missile that uses projectile motion to deliver warheads on a target. These weapons are guided only during relatively brief periods—most of the flight is unpowered. Short-range ballistic missiles stay within the ...
s and Project Apollo.
These activities affected MIT profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of "any great slackening in the pace of life at the Institute" to match the return to peacetime, remembering the "academic tranquility of the prewar years", though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the terms of
Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton (September 14, 1887 – June 22, 1954) was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from 1930 to 1948.
The early years (1887–1912)
Karl Taylor Compton was born in ...
, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948;
James Rhyne Killian
James Rhyne Killian Jr. (July 24, 1904 – January 29, 1988) was the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1948 until 1959.
Early life
Killian was born on July 24, 1904, in Blacksburg, South Carolina. His father w ...
, president from 1948 to 1957; and
Julius Adams Stratton
Julius Adams Stratton (May 18, 1901 – June 22, 1994) was a U.S. electrical engineer and university administrator. He attended the University of Washington for one year, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity, then transferred to th ...
, chancellor from 1952 to 1957, whose institution-building strategies shaped the expanding university. By the 1950s, MIT no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government.
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
and MIT's defense research. In this period MIT's various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for the war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. The
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a nonprofit science advocacy organization based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. Anne Kapuscinski, Professor of Environmenta ...
was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems. MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to "greater strength and unity" after these times of turmoil. However six MIT students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas, are still indignant about MIT's role in military research and its suppression of these protests. (
Richard Leacock
Richard Leacock (18 July 192123 March 2011) The Telegraph (Lon ...
's film, ''November Actions'', records some of these tumultuous events.)
In the 1980s, there was more controversy at MIT over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, MIT's research for the military has included work on robots, drones and 'battle suits'.
Recent history
MIT has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and
networking
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
computer video game
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This feedbac ...
s like ''
Spacewar!
''Spacewar!'' is a space combat video game developed in 1962 by Steve Russell in collaboration with Martin Graetz, Wayne Wiitanen, Bob Saunders, Steve Piner, and others. It was written for the newly installed DEC PDP-1 minicomputer at the Mas ...
slang
Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...
and culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s:
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
's
GNU Project
The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...
and the subsequent
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...
were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology; the
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...
; the
OpenCourseWare
OpenCourseWare (OCW) are Course (education), course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. OCW projects first appeared in the late 1990s, and after gaining traction in Europe and then the United States have becom ...
project has made course materials for over 2,000 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002; and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005.
MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into
biology
Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...
genomics
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...
,
biotechnology
Biotechnology is the integration of natural sciences and engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms, cells, parts thereof and molecular analogues for products and services. The term ''biotechnology'' was first used b ...
, and
cancer research
Cancer research is research into cancer to identify causes and develop strategies for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and cure.
Cancer research ranges from epidemiology, molecular bioscience to the performance of clinical trials to evaluate and ...
; and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the
Stata Center
The Ray and Maria Stata Center or Building 32 is a 430,000-square-foot (40,000 m2) academic complex designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The building opened for initial ...
. Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of the Media Lab, the Sloan School's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing
global energy consumption
Global means of or referring to a globe and may also refer to:
Entertainment
* ''Global'' (Paul van Dyk album), 2003
* ''Global'' (Bunji Garlin album), 2007
* ''Global'' (Humanoid album), 1989
* ''Global'' (Todd Rundgren album), 2015
* Bruno ...
.
In 2001, inspired by the
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
and
open access movement
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
s, MIT launched
OpenCourseWare
OpenCourseWare (OCW) are Course (education), course lessons created at universities and published for free via the Internet. OCW projects first appeared in the late 1990s, and after gaining traction in Europe and then the United States have becom ...
to make the lecture notes,
problem set A problem set, sometimes shortened as pset, is a teaching tool used by many universities. Most courses in physics, math, engineering, chemistry, and computer science will give problem sets on a regular basis. They can also appear in other subjects, ...
s, syllabi, exams, and lectures from the great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, MIT announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its "MITx" program, for a modest fee. The " edX" online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and its analogous "Harvardx" initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the MIT faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship
publicly accessible
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...
Sean Collier
The Boston Marathon bombing was a domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Two terrorists, brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs, w ...
Tamerlan Tsarnaev
Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (; October 21, 1986 – April 19, 2013)russian: link=no, Тамерла́н Анзо́рович Царна́ев ; ce, Царнаев Анзор-кIант Тамерлан ; ky, Тамерлан Анзор уул ...
, setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier's memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the MIT community with thousands of police officers from the New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, MIT announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to "an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of the MIT community and in all aspects of his life". The announcement further stated that "Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed the boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness".
In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open a new
Schwarzman College of Computing
The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is a college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Announced in 2018 to address the growing applications of computing technolog ...
dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and
The Blackstone Group
Blackstone Inc. is an American alternative investment management company based in New York City. Blackstone's private equity business has been one of the largest investors in leveraged buyouts in the last three decades, while its real estate bu ...
CEO
Stephen Schwarzman
Stephen Allen Schwarzman (born February 14, 1947) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he established in 1985 with Peter G. Peterson, former chairman and CEO of ...
. The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $1 billion upon completion.
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology, MIT, and industrial contractors, and funded by the
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
. It was designed to open the field of
gravitational-wave astronomy
Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging branch of observational astronomy which aims to use gravitational waves (minute distortions of spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity) to collect observational data about ...
through the detection of
gravitational wave
Gravitational waves are waves of the intensity of gravity generated by the accelerated masses of an orbital binary system that propagate as waves outward from their source at the speed of light. They were first proposed by Oliver Heaviside in 1 ...
s predicted by
general relativity
General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics ...
. Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and
Barry Barish
Barry Clark Barish (born January 27, 1936) is an American experimental physicist and Nobel Laureate. He is a Linde Professor of Physics, emeritus at California Institute of Technology and a leading expert on gravitational waves.
In 2017, Baris ...
Nobel Prize in physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
in 2017. Weiss, who is also an MIT graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO.
Campus
MIT's campus in the city of
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
spans approximately a mile along the north side of the
Charles River
The Charles River ( Massachusett: ''Quinobequin)'' (sometimes called the River Charles or simply the Charles) is an river in eastern Massachusetts. It flows northeast from Hopkinton to Boston along a highly meandering route, that doubles b ...
basin. The campus is divided roughly in half by
Massachusetts Avenue Massachusetts Avenue may refer to:
* Massachusetts Avenue (metropolitan Boston), Massachusetts
** Massachusetts Avenue (MBTA Orange Line station), a subway station on the MBTA Orange Line
** Massachusetts Avenue (MBTA Silver Line station), a stati ...
, with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the
smoot
The smoot is a nonstandard, humorous unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot, a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 lay down repeatedly on the Harvard Bridge (betwe ...
MBTA Red Line
The Red Line is a rapid transit line operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) as part of the MBTA subway system. The line runs south and east underground from Alewife station in North Cambridge through Somerville and Camb ...
station is located on the northeastern edge of the campus, in Kendall Square. The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings, as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods. In early 2016, MIT presented its updated Kendall Square Initiative to the City of Cambridge, with plans for mixed-use educational, retail, residential, startup incubator, and office space in a dense high-rise transit-oriented development plan. The MIT Museum will eventually be moved immediately adjacent to a Kendall Square subway entrance, joining the
List Visual Arts Center
Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admini ...
on the eastern end of the campus.
Each building at MIT has a number (possibly preceded by a ''W'', ''N'', ''E'', or ''NW'') designation, and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to the order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original center cluster of Maclaurin buildings. Many of the buildings are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking.
MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is one of the most powerful university-based
nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are used at nuclear power plants for electricity generation and in nuclear marine propulsion. Heat from nu ...
s in the United States. The prominence of the reactor's containment building in a densely populated area has been controversial, but MIT maintains that it is well-secured. In 1999
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
donated US$20 million to MIT for the construction of a computer laboratory named the "William H. Gates Building", and designed by architect
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
His works are considered ...
. While Microsoft had previously given financial support to the institution, this was the first personal donation received from Gates.
MIT Nano, also known as Building 12, is an interdisciplinary facility for nanoscale research. Its cleanroom and research space, visible through expansive glass facades, is the largest research facility of its kind in the nation. With a cost of US$400 million, it is also one of the costliest buildings on campus. The facility also provides state-of-the-art nanoimaging capabilities with vibration damped imaging and metrology suites sitting atop a slab of concrete underground.
Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized
wind tunnel
Wind tunnels are large tubes with air blowing through them which are used to replicate the interaction between air and an object flying through the air or moving along the ground. Researchers use wind tunnels to learn more about how an aircraft ...
towing tank
A ship model basin is a basin or tank used to carry out hydrodynamic tests with ship models, for the purpose of designing a new (full sized) ship, or refining the design of a ship to improve the ship's performance at sea. It can also refer to th ...
for testing ship and ocean structure designs, and previously Alcator C-Mod, which was the largest fusion device operated by any university. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering of campus.
In 2001, the
Environmental Protection Agency
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
sued MIT for violating the
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act (CWA) is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Its objective is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the nation's waters; recognizing the responsibiliti ...
hazardous waste
Hazardous waste is waste that has substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. Hazardous waste is a type of dangerous goods. They usually have one or more of the following hazardous traits: ignitability, reactivity, co ...
storage and disposal procedures. MIT settled the suit by paying a $155,000 fine and launching three environmental projects. In connection with capital campaigns to expand the campus, the Institute has also extensively renovated existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency. MIT has also taken steps to reduce its environmental impact by running alternative fuel campus shuttles, subsidizing public transportation passes, and building a low-emission
cogeneration
Cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) is the use of a heat engine or power station to generate electricity and useful heat at the same time.
Cogeneration is a more efficient use of fuel or heat, because otherwise- wasted heat from elect ...
plant that serves most of the campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements.
MIT has substantial
commercial real estate
Commercial property, also called commercial real estate, investment property or income property, is real estate (buildings or land) intended to generate a profit, either from capital gains or rental income. Commercial property includes office bu ...
holdings in Cambridge on which it pays
property tax
A property tax or millage rate is an ad valorem tax on the value of a property.In the OECD classification scheme, tax on property includes "taxes on immovable property or net wealth, taxes on the change of ownership of property through inheri ...
es, plus an additional voluntary payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) on academic buildings which are legally tax-exempt. , it is the largest taxpayer in the city, contributing approximately 14% of the city's annual revenues. Holdings include Technology Square, parts of Kendall Square, and many properties in
Cambridgeport
Cambridgeport is one of the neighborhoods of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is bounded by Massachusetts Avenue, the Charles River, the Grand Junction Railroad, and River Street. The neighborhood contains predominantly residential homes, many of the ...
and Area 4 neighboring the educational buildings. The land is held for investment purposes and potential long-term expansion.
Architecture
MIT's School of Architecture, now the School of Architecture and Planning, was the first formal architecture program in the United States, and it has a history of commissioning progressive buildings. The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are sometimes called the "Maclaurin buildings" after Institute president
Richard Maclaurin
Richard Cockburn Maclaurin ( ; June 5, 1870 – January 15, 1920) was a Scottish-born U.S. educator and mathematical physicist. He was made president of MIT in 1909, and held the position until his death in 1920.
During his tenure as president ...
who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of
reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...
, a first for a non-industrial – much less university – building in the US. Bosworth's design was influenced by the City Beautiful Movement of the early 1900s and features the
Pantheon
Pantheon may refer to:
* Pantheon (religion), a set of gods belonging to a particular religion or tradition, and a temple or sacred building
Arts and entertainment Comics
*Pantheon (Marvel Comics), a fictional organization
* ''Pantheon'' (Lone St ...
-esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where
graduation
Graduation is the awarding of a diploma to a student by an educational institution. It may also refer to the ceremony that is associated with it. The date of the graduation ceremony is often called graduation day. The graduation ceremony is a ...
ceremonies are held each year. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers. The spacious Building 7 atrium at 77 Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the
Infinite Corridor
The Infinite Corridor 203 pp. is a hallway that runs through the Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8 (f ...
and the rest of the campus.
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto (; 3 February 1898 – 11 May 1976) was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware, as well as sculptures and paintings. He never regarded himself as an artist, see ...
's Baker House (1947),
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen (, ; August 20, 1910 – September 1, 1961) was a Finnish-American architect and industrial designer noted for his wide-ranging array of designs for buildings and monuments. Saarinen is best known for designing the General Motors ...
's
MIT Chapel
The MIT Chapel (dedicated 1955, completed in 1956) is a non-denominational chapel designed by noted architect Eero Saarinen. It is located on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next to Kresge Aud ...
and
Kresge Auditorium
Kresge Auditorium (MIT Building W16) is an auditorium structure at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located at 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was designed by the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, with gr ...
(1955), and
I.M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei – website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...
's
Green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 Nanometre, nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by ...
, Dreyfus, Landau, and
Wiesner Wiesner is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Arnošt Wiesner (1890–1971), modernist architect, also known as Ernst Wiesner
* Bernd Wiesner, skydiver who competed for the SC Dynamo Hoppegarten/ Sportvereinigung (SV) Dynam ...
buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture. More recent buildings like
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, , FAIA (; ; born ) is a Canadian-born American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become world-renowned attractions.
His works are considered ...
's
Stata Center
The Ray and Maria Stata Center or Building 32 is a 430,000-square-foot (40,000 m2) academic complex designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The building opened for initial ...
(2004),
Steven Holl
Steven Holl (born December 9, 1947) is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist. Among his most recognized works are the 2019 REACH expansion of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the 2019 Hunters Point Library in Q ...
Fumihiko Maki
is a Japanese architect who teaches at Keio University SFC. In 1993, he received the Pritzker Prize for his work, which often explores pioneering uses of new materials and fuses the cultures of east and west.
Early life
Maki was born in Tokyo. A ...
's Media Lab Extension (2009) stand out among the Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture". These buildings have not always been well received; in 2010, ''
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is an education services company providing tutoring, test preparation and admission resources for students. It was founded in 1981. and since that time has worked with over 400 million students. Services are delivered by 4,0 ...
'' included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both".
Housing
Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 11 undergraduate dormitories. Those living on campus can receive support and mentoring from live-in graduate student tutors, resident advisors, and faculty housemasters. Because housing assignments are made based on the preferences of the students themselves, diverse social atmospheres can be sustained in different living groups; for example, according to the ''Yale Daily News'' staff's ''The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010'', "The split between East Campus and West Campus is a significant characteristic of MIT. East Campus has gained a reputation as a thriving counterculture." MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.
MIT has an active Greek and co-op housing system, including thirty-six fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (
FSILG
This is a list of FSILGs, or fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (ILGs) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT's Greek system
The first, or pioneer fraternity on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Techn ...
s). , 98% of all undergraduates lived in MIT-affiliated housing; 54% of the men participated in fraternities and 20% of the women were involved in sororities. Most FSILGs are located across the river in Back Bay near where MIT was founded, and there is also a cluster of fraternities on MIT's West Campus that face the Charles River Basin. After the 1997 alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger, a new pledge at the
Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Gamma Delta (), commonly known as Fiji, is a social fraternity with more than 144 active chapters and 10 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848. Along with Phi Kappa Psi, Phi ...
fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002. Because FSILGs had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy could not be implemented until Simmons Hall opened in that year.
In 2013–2014, MIT abruptly closed and then demolished undergrad dorm Bexley Hall, citing extensive water damage that made repairs infeasible. In 2017, MIT shut down Senior House after a century of service as an undergrad dorm. That year, MIT administrators released data showing just 60% of Senior House residents had graduated in four years. Campus-wide, the four-year graduation rate is 84% (the cumulative graduation rate is significantly higher).
Organization and administration
MIT is chartered as a non-profit organization and is owned and governed by a privately appointed
board of trustees
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
known as the MIT Corporation. The current board consists of 43 members elected to five-year terms, 25 life members who vote until their 75th birthday, 3 elected officers (President, Treasurer, and Secretary), and 4 ''
ex officio
An ''ex officio'' member is a member of a body (notably a board, committee, council) who is part of it by virtue of holding another office. The term '' ex officio'' is Latin, meaning literally 'from the office', and the sense intended is 'by right ...
'' members (the president of the alumni association, the
Governor of Massachusetts
The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the chief executive officer of the government of Massachusetts. The governor is the head of the state cabinet and the commander-in-chief of the commonwealth's military forces.
Massachusetts ...
, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, and the Chief Justice of the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) is the court of last resort, highest court in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Although the claim is disputed by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the SJC claims the di ...
). The board is chaired by Diane Greene SM ’78, co-founder and former CEO of VMware and former CEO of Google Cloud. The Corporation approves the budget, new programs, degrees and faculty appointments, and elects the President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and preside over the Institute's faculty. MIT's
endowment
Endowment most often refers to:
*A term for human penis size
It may also refer to: Finance
*Financial endowment, pertaining to funds or property donated to institutions or individuals (e.g., college endowment)
*Endowment mortgage, a mortgage to b ...
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...
,
Engineering
Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...
Management
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities o ...
, and
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) is a broad term used to group together the academic disciplines of humanities, arts and social sciences. It is used as an academic counterpart to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the ...
) and one college (
Schwarzman College of Computing
The MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing is a college at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Announced in 2018 to address the growing applications of computing technolog ...
), but no schools of law or medicine. While faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs, the chair of each of MIT's 32 academic departments reports to the dean of that department's school, who in turn reports to the Provost under the President. The current president is L. Rafael Reif, who formerly served as provost under President Susan Hockfield, the first woman to hold the post.
Sally Kornbluth
Sally Ann Kornbluth is a cell biologist and the James B. Duke Professor of Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. Since 2014, she served as the Provost at Duke, and is the first woman to serve in this role. She ...
, a cell biologist and provost at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
will become MIT's 18th president in January 2023.
Academics
MIT is a large, highly residential, research university with a majority of enrollments in graduate and professional programs. The university has been accredited by the
New England Association of Schools and Colleges
The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. (NEASC) is a United States' regional accreditation association providing educational accreditation. NEASC serves over 1500 public, independent schools, and technical/career institution ...
since 1929. MIT operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall semester beginning after
Labor Day
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United St ...
and ending in mid-December, a 4-week "Independent Activities Period" in the month of January, and the spring semester commencing in early February and ceasing in late May.
MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers or acronyms alone. Departments and their corresponding majors are numbered in the approximate order of their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is , while Linguistics and Philosophy is . Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course 6". MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; for instance, the introductory calculus-based
classical mechanics
Classical mechanics is a physical theory describing the motion of macroscopic objects, from projectiles to parts of machinery, and astronomical objects, such as spacecraft, planets, stars, and galaxies. For objects governed by classical ...
course is simply "8.01" at MIT.
Undergraduate program
The four-year, full-time undergraduate program maintains a balance between professional majors and those in the arts and sciences. In 2010, it was dubbed "most selective" by ''
U.S. News
''U.S. News & World Report'' (USNWR) is an American media company that publishes news, consumer advice, rankings, and analysis. It was launched in 1948 as the merger of domestic-focused weekly newspaper ''U.S. News'' and international-focused ...
'', admitting few transfer students and 4.1% of its applicants in the 2020–2021 admissions cycle. MIT offers 44 undergraduate degrees across its five schools. In the 2017–2018 academic year, 1,045 Bachelor of Science degrees (abbreviated " SB") were granted, the only type of undergraduate degree MIT now awards. In the 2011 fall term, among students who had designated a major, the School of Engineering was the most popular division, enrolling 63% of students in its 19 degree programs, followed by the School of Science (29%), School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (3.7%), Sloan School of Management (3.3%), and School of Architecture and Planning (2%). The largest undergraduate degree programs were in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (), Computer Science and Engineering (), Mechanical Engineering (), Physics (), and Mathematics ().
All undergraduates are required to complete a core curriculum called the General Institute Requirements (GIRs). The Science Requirement, generally completed during freshman year as prerequisites for classes in science and engineering majors, comprises two semesters of physics, two semesters of calculus, one semester of chemistry, and one semester of biology. There is a Laboratory Requirement, usually satisfied by an appropriate class in a course major. The Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS) Requirement consists of eight semesters of classes in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, including at least one semester from each division as well as the courses required for a designated concentration in a HASS division. Under the Communication Requirement, two of the HASS classes, plus two of the classes taken in the designated major must be "communication-intensive", including "substantial instruction and practice in oral presentation". Finally, all students are required to complete a swimming test; non-varsity athletes must also take four quarters of
physical education
Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys Ed. or P.E., is a subject taught in schools around the world. It is usually taught during primary and secondary education, and encourages psychomotor learning by using a play and movement explorati ...
classes.
Most classes rely on a combination of lectures, recitations led by associate professors or graduate students, weekly problem sets ("p-sets"), and periodic quizzes or tests. While the pace and difficulty of MIT coursework has been compared to "drinking from a fire hose", the freshmen retention rate at MIT is similar to other research universities. The "pass/no-record" grading system relieves some pressure for first-year undergraduates. For each class taken in the fall term, freshmen transcripts will either report only that the class was passed, or otherwise not have any record of it. In the spring term, passing grades (A, B, C) appear on the transcript while non-passing grades are again not recorded. (Grading had previously been "pass/no record" all freshman year, but was amended for the Class of 2006 to prevent students from
gaming the system
Gaming the system (also rigging, abusing, cheating, milking, playing, working, or breaking the system, or gaming or bending the rules) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system to, instead, Psychological manipula ...
by completing required major classes in their freshman year.) Also, freshmen may choose to join alternative learning communities, such as
Experimental Study Group
The Experimental Study Group (ESG) describes itself as a freshman learning community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was created in 1969 by Professor George Valley to explore alternative teaching and learning methods in a small ...
,
Concourse
A concourse is a place where pathways or roads meet, such as in a hotel, a convention center, a railway station, an airport terminal, a hall, or other space.
The term is not limited to places where there are literally pathways or roadways or t ...
, or Terrascope.
In 1969,
Margaret MacVicar
Margaret L.A. (Scotty) MacVicar (November 20, 1943 – September 30, 1991) was an American physicist and educator. In addition to serving as MIT's Dean of Undergraduate Education (1985–1990), MacVicar is credited with founding the now widely em ...
founded the
Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program
An Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program provides funding and/or credit to undergraduate students who volunteer for faculty-mentored research projects pertaining to all academic disciplines.
Participating universities
Universities involved ...
(UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. Students join or initiate research projects ("UROPs") for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly. A substantial majority of undergraduates participate. Students often become published, file patent applications, and/or launch
start-up companies
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
based upon their experience in UROPs.
In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published ''
The Hidden Curriculum
''The Hidden Curriculum'' (1970) is a book by the psychiatrist Benson R. Snyder, the then-Dean of Institute Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Snyder advances a thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxi ...
,'' arguing that education at MIT was often slighted in favor of following a set of unwritten expectations and that graduating with good grades was more often the product of figuring out the system rather than a solid education. The successful student, according to Snyder, was the one who was able to discern which of the formal requirements were to be ignored in favor of which unstated norms. For example, organized student groups had compiled " course bibles"—collections of problem-set and examination questions and answers for later students to use as references. This sort of gamesmanship, Snyder argued, hindered development of a creative intellect and contributed to student discontent and unrest.
Graduate program
MIT's graduate program has high coexistence with the undergraduate program, and many courses are taken by qualified students at both levels. MIT offers a comprehensive doctoral program with degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields as well as professional degrees, including the Master of Business Administration (MBA). The Institute offers graduate programs leading to academic degrees such as the Master of Science (which is abbreviated as SM at MIT), various Engineer's Degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), and Doctor of Science (ScD) and interdisciplinary graduate programs such as the MD-PhD (with
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School (HMS) is the graduate medical school of Harvard University and is located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1782, HMS is one of the oldest medical schools in the United States and is consi ...
) and a joint program in
oceanography
Oceanography (), also known as oceanology and ocean science, is the scientific study of the oceans. It is an Earth science, which covers a wide range of topics, including ecosystem dynamics; ocean currents, waves, and geophysical fluid dynamic ...
with
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering.
Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...
.
Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. More than 90% of doctoral students are supported by fellowships, research assistantships (RAs), or teaching assistantships (TAs).
MIT Bootcamps
MIT Bootcamps are intense week-long innovation and leadership programs that challenge participants to develop a venture in a week. Each Bootcamp centers around a particular topic, specific to an industry, leadership skill set, or emerging technology. Cohorts are organized into small teams who work on an entrepreneurial project together, in addition to individual learning and team coaching. The program includes a series of online seminars with MIT faculty, practitioners, and industry experts, innovation workshops with bootcamp instructors focused on putting the theory participants have learned into practice, coaching sessions, and informal office hours for learners to exchange ideas freely. Bootcampers are tasked with weekly "deliverables," which are key elements of a business plan, to help guide the group through the decision-making process involved in building an enterprise. The experience culminates in a final pitch session, judged by a panel of experts.
MIT Bootcamp instructors include
Eric von Hippel
Eric von Hippel (born August 27, 1941) is an American economist and a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in the nature and economics of distributed and open innovation. He is best known for his work in developing the ...
,
Sanjay Sarma
Sanjay E. Sarma (born May 1968) an Indian mechanical engineer who is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) professor of mechanical engineering and the Vice President for Open Learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technolog ...
Bill Aulet
Bill Aulet is the Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at MIT and Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management anMIT Sloan Executive Education He is also the author of ''Disciplined Entrepreneurs ...
MIT places among the top five in many overall rankings of universities (see table right) and rankings based on students'
revealed preferences
Revealed preference theory, pioneered by economist Paul Anthony Samuelson in 1938, is a method of analyzing choices made by individuals, mostly used for comparing the influence of policies on consumer behavior. Revealed preference models assume t ...
QS World University Rankings
''QS World University Rankings'' is an annual publication of university rankings by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). The QS system comprises three parts: the global overall ranking, the subject rankings (which name the world's top universities for the ...
, and the
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The ''Academic Ranking of World Universities'' (''ARWU''), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, is one of the annual publications of world university rankings. The league table was originally compiled and issued by Shanghai Jiao Tong University ...
have ranked MIT's School of Engineering first, as did the 1995
National Research Council National Research Council may refer to:
* National Research Council (Canada), sponsoring research and development
* National Research Council (Italy), scientific and technological research, Rome
* National Research Council (United States), part of ...
report. In the same lists, MIT's strongest showings apart from in engineering are in computer science, the natural sciences, business, architecture, economics, linguistics, mathematics, and, to a lesser extent, political science and philosophy.
Times Higher Education
''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The Thes''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education.
Ownership
TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...
has recognized MIT as one of the world's "six super brands" on its ''World Reputation Rankings'', along with
Berkeley
Berkeley most often refers to:
*Berkeley, California, a city in the United States
**University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California
* George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher
Berkeley may also refer ...
,
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
,
Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
,
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
, and
Stanford
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...
. In 2019, it was ranked #3 among the universities around the world by
SCImago Institutions Rankings
The SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) since 2009 has published its international ranking of worldwide research institutions, the SIR World Report. The SIR World Report is the work of the SCImago Research Group, MIT was ranked #7 in 2015 and #6 in 2017 of the Nature Index Annual Tables, which measure the largest contributors to papers published in 82 leading journals. Georgetown University researchers ranked MIT #3 in the US for 20-year return on investment.
Collaborations
The university historically pioneered research and training collaborations between academia, industry and government. In 1946, President Compton, Harvard Business School professor Georges Doriot, and Massachusetts Investor Trust chairman Merrill Grisswold founded American Research and Development Corporation, the first American venture-capital firm. In 1948, Compton established the MIT Industrial Liaison Program. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, American politicians and business leaders accused MIT and other universities of contributing to a Late 1980s recession, declining economy by technology transfer, transferring taxpayer-funded research and technology to international – especially Economy of Japan, Japanese – firms that were competing with struggling American businesses. On the other hand, MIT's extensive collaboration with the federal government on research projects has led to several MIT leaders serving as President's Science Advisory Committee, presidential scientific advisers since 1940. MIT established a Washington Office in 1991 to continue effective lobbying for research funding and national science policy.
The United States Department of Justice, US Justice Department began an investigation in 1989, and in 1991 filed an Sherman Antitrust Act, antitrust suit against MIT, the eight
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...
colleges, and eleven other institutions for allegedly engaging in price-fixing during their annual "Overlap Meetings", which were held to prevent bidding wars over promising prospective students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships. While the Ivy League institutions consent decree, settled, MIT contested the charges, arguing that the practice was not anti-competitive because it ensured the availability of aid for the greatest number of students. MIT ultimately prevailed when the Justice Department dropped the case in 1994.
MIT's proximityMIT's Building 7 and Harvard's Johnston Gate, the traditional entrances to each school, are apart along Massachusetts Avenue (Boston), Massachusetts Avenue. to
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
("the other school up the Charles River, river") has led to a substantial number of research collaborations such as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology and the Broad Institute. In addition, students at the two schools can cross-registration, cross-register for credits toward their own school's degrees without any additional fees. A cross-registration program between MIT and Wellesley College has also existed since 1969, and in 2002 the Cambridge–MIT Institute launched an undergraduate exchange program between MIT and the University of Cambridge. MIT also has a long-term partnership with Imperial College London, for both student exchanges and research collaboration. More modest cross-registration programs have been established with Boston University, Brandeis University, Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
MIT maintains substantial research and faculty ties with independent research organizations in the Boston area, such as the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, the Whitehead Institute, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, acronym pronounced ) is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of marine science and engineering.
Established in 1930 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, it i ...
. Ongoing international research and educational collaborations include th Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) Singapore-MIT Alliance, MIT-Politecnico di Milano, MIT-University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza International Logistics Program, and projects in other countries through the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program.
The mass-market magazine ''
Technology Review
''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...
'' is published by MIT through a subsidiary company, as is a special edition that also serves as an alumni magazine. The MIT Press is a major university press, publishing over 200 books and 30 journals annually, emphasizing science and technology as well as arts, architecture, new media, current events, and social issues.
Libraries, collections, and museums
The MIT library system consists of five subject libraries: Barker (Engineering), Dewey (Economics), Hayden (Humanities and Science), Lewis (Music), and Rotch (Arts and Architecture). There are also various specialized libraries and archives. The libraries contain more than 2.9 million printed volumes, 2.4 million microforms, 49,000 print or electronic journal subscriptions, and 670 reference databases. The past decade has seen a trend of increased focus on digital over print resources in the libraries. Notable collections include the Lewis Music Library with an emphasis on 20th and 21st-century music and electronic music, the
List Visual Arts Center
Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admini ...
's rotating exhibitions of contemporary art, and the Compton Gallery's cross-disciplinary exhibitions. MIT allocates a percentage of the budget for all new construction and renovation to commission and support its extensive public art and outdoor sculpture collection.
The MIT Museum was founded in 1971 and collects, preserves, and exhibits artifacts significant to the culture and history of MIT. The museum now engages in significant educational outreach programs for the general public, including the annual MIT Museum#Cambridge Science Festival, Cambridge Science Festival, the first celebration of this kind in the United States. Since 2005, its official mission has been, "to engage the wider community with MIT's science, technology and other areas of scholarship in ways that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century".
Research
MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity"; research expenditures totaled $952 million in 2017. The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the Department of Health and Human Services granting $255.9 million, United States Department of Defense, Department of Defense $97.5 million, United States Department of Energy, Department of Energy $65.8 million,
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...
$61.4 million, and NASA $27.4 million. MIT employs approximately 1300 researchers in addition to faculty. In 2011, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 632 inventions, were issued 153 patents, earned $85.4 million in cash income, and received $69.6 million in royalties. Through programs like the Deshpande Center, MIT faculty leverage their research and discoveries into multi-million-dollar commercial ventures.
In electronics, magnetic-core memory,
radar
Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...
, single-electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers. Harold Eugene Edgerton was a pioneer in high-speed photography and sonar. Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern information theory and discovered the application of Boolean logic to digital circuit design theory. In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to Norbert Wiener, cybernetics, Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence, Joseph Weizenbaum, computer languages, Patrick Winston, machine learning, Rodney Brooks, robotics, and Ronald Rivest, cryptography. At least nine
Turing Award
The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...
laureates and seven recipients of the Draper Prize in engineering have been or are currently associated with MIT.
Current and previous physics faculty have won eight Nobel Prize in Physics, Nobel Prizes, four Dirac Medal#Dirac Medal of the ICTP, Dirac Medals, and three Wolf Prizes predominantly for their contributions to subatomic and quantum theory. Members of the chemistry department have been awarded three Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prizes and one Wolf Prize for the discovery of novel syntheses and methods. MIT biologists have been awarded six Nobel Prize in Medicine, Nobel Prizes for their contributions to genetics, immunology, oncology, and molecular biology. Professor Eric Lander was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project. Positronium atoms, synthetic penicillin, Julius Rebek, synthetic self-replicating molecules, and the genetic bases for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease) and Huntington's disease were first discovered at MIT. Jerome Lettvin transformed the study of cognitive science with his paper "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain". Researchers developed a system to convert MRI scans into 3D printed physical models.
In the domain of humanities, arts, and social sciences, as of October 2019 MIT economists have been awarded seven Nobel Prize in Economics, Nobel Prizes and nine John Bates Clark Medals. Linguists Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle authored seminal texts on generative grammar and phonology. The MIT Media Lab, founded in 1985 within the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture and Planning and known for its unconventional research, has been home to influential researchers such as Constructivism (learning theory), constructivist educator and Logo (programming language), Logo creator Seymour Papert.
Spanning many of the above fields, MacArthur Fellowships (the so-called "Genius Grants") have been awarded to 50 people associated with MIT. Five Pulitzer Prize–winning writers currently work at or have retired from MIT. Four current or former faculty are members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Allegations of research misconduct or improprieties have received substantial press coverage. Professor David Baltimore, a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, Nobel Laureate, became embroiled in a misconduct investigation starting in 1986 that led to Congressional hearings in 1991. Professor Ted Postol has accused the MIT administration since 2000 of attempting to Whitewash (censorship), whitewash potential research misconduct at the Lincoln Lab facility involving a ballistic missile defense test, though a final investigation into the matter has not been completed. Associate Professor Luk Van Parijs was dismissed in 2005 following allegations of scientific misconduct and found guilty of the same by the United States Office of Research Integrity in 2009.
In 2019, Clarivate Analytics named 54 members of MIT's faculty to its list of "Highly Cited Researchers". That number places MIT eighth among the world's universities.
Discoveries and innovation
Natural sciences
*Oncogene – Robert Weinberg (biologist), Robert Weinberg discovered genetic basis of human cancer.
*David Baltimore#Reverse transcriptase, Reverse transcription – David Baltimore independently isolated, in 1970 at MIT, two RNA tumor viruses: Murine leukemia virus, R-MLV and again Rous sarcoma virus, RSV.
*Thermal death time – Samuel Cate Prescott and William Lyman Underwood from 1895 to 1898. Done for canning of food. Applications later found useful in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.
Computer and applied sciences
*Akamai Technologies – Daniel Lewin and Tom Leighton developed a faster content delivery network, now one of the world's largest distributed computing platforms, responsible for serving between 15 and 30 percent of all web traffic.
*Cryptography – MIT researchers Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman developed one of the first practical public-key cryptography, public-key cryptosystems, the RSA (cryptosystem), RSA cryptosystem, and started a company, RSA Security.
*Digital circuits – Claude Shannon, while a master's degree student at MIT, developed the digital circuit design theory which paved the way for modern computers.
*Electronic ink – developed by Joseph Jacobson at MIT Media Lab.
*Emacs, Emacs (text editor) – development began during the 1970s at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, MIT AI Lab.
*Flight recorder, Flight recorder (black box) – Charles Stark Draper developed the black box at Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, MIT's Instrumentation Laboratory. That lab later made the Apollo program, Apollo Moon landings possible through the Apollo Guidance Computer it designed for NASA.
*
GNU Project
The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...
–
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...
formally founded the free software movement in 1983 by launching the
GNU Project
The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaborati ...
at MIT.
*Julia (programming language) – Development was started in 2009, by Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Viral B. Shah, and Alan Edelman, all at MIT at that time, and continued with the contribution of a dedicated MIT Julia Lab
*Lisp (programming language) – John McCarthy (computer scientist), John McCarthy invented Lisp at MIT in 1958.
*Lithium-ion battery#Commercialization and advances, Lithium-ion battery efficiencies – Yet-Ming Chiang and his group at MIT showed a substantial improvement in the performance of lithium batteries by boosting the material's conductivity by Doping (semiconductor), doping it with aluminium, niobium and zirconium.
*Macsyma, one of the oldest general-purpose computer algebra systems; the GPL-licensed version Maxima (software), Maxima remains in wide use.. See also
*MIT OpenCourseWare – the OpenCourseWare movement started in 1999 when the University of Tübingen in Germany published videos of lectures online for its ''timms'' initiative (Tübinger Internet Multimedia Server). The OCW movement only took off, however, with the launch of MIT OpenCourseWare and the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University in October 2002. The movement was soon reinforced by the launch of similar projects at Yale, Utah State University, the University of Michigan and the University of California Berkeley.
*Perdix micro-drone – autonomous drone that uses
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
to swarm with many other Perdix drones.
* Project MAC – groundbreaking research in operating systems,
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
, and the theory of computation. DARPA funded project.
*Radar in World War II, Radar – developed at MIT's Radiation Laboratory (MIT), Radiation Laboratory during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
*Sketchpad, SKETCHPAD – invented by Ivan Sutherland at MIT (presented in his PhD thesis). It pioneered the way for human–computer interaction (HCI). Sketchpad is considered to be the ancestor of modern computer-aided design (CAD) programs as well as a major breakthrough in the development of computer graphics in general.
*VisiCalc – first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for the Apple II by VisiCorp. MIT alumni Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston rented time sharing at night on an MIT mainframe computer (that cost $1/hr for use).
*
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working to ...
– founded in 1994 by
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (born 8 June 1955), also known as TimBL, is an English computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. He is a Professorial Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Oxford and a profess ...
, (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web
*X Window System – pioneering architecture-independent system for graphical user interfaces that has been widely used for Unix and Linux systems.
Companies and entrepreneurship
MIT alumni and faculty have founded numerous companies, some of which are shown below:
*Analog Devices, 1965, co-founders Ray Stata, (SB, SM) and Matthew Lorber (SB)
*BlackRock, 1988, co-founder Bennett Golub, (SB, SM, PhD)
*Bose Corporation, 1964, founder Amar Bose (SB, PhD)
*BuzzFeed, Buzzfeed, 2006, co-founder Jonah Peretti (SM)
*Dropbox (service), Dropbox, 2007, founders Drew Houston (SB) and Arash Ferdowsi (drop-out)
*Hewlett-Packard, 1939, co-founder William Redington Hewlett, William R. Hewlett (SM)
*''HuffPost,'' 2005, co-founder Jonah Peretti (SM)
*Intel, 1968, co-founder Robert Noyce (PhD)
*Koch Industries, 1940, founder Fred C. Koch (SB), sons Bill Koch (businessman), William (SB, PhD), David Koch, David (SB)
*Qualcomm, 1985, co-founders Irwin M. Jacobs (SM, PhD) and Andrew Viterbi (SB, SM)
*Raytheon, 1922, co-founder
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...
(DEng, Professor)
*Renaissance Technologies, 1982, founder James Harris Simons, James Simons (SB)
*Texas Instruments, 1930, founder Cecil Howard Green (SB, SM)
*TSMC, 1987, founder Morris Chang (SB, SM)
*VMware, 1998, co-founder Diane Greene (SM)
Traditions and student activities
The faculty and student body place a high value on meritocracy and on technical proficiency. MIT has never awarded an honorary degree, nor does it award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degree, '' ad eundem'' degrees, or Latin honors upon graduation. However, MIT has twice awarded honorary professorships: to Winston Churchill in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.
Many wikt:upperclassman, upperclass students and alumni wear a large, heavy, distinctive class ring known as the "Brass Rat". Originally created in 1929, the ring's official name is the "Standard Technology Ring". The undergraduate ring design (a separate graduate student version exists as well) varies slightly from year to year to reflect the unique character of the MIT experience for that class, but always features a three-piece design, with the MIT seal and the class year each appearing on a separate face, flanking a large rectangular bezel bearing an image of a American Beaver, beaver. The initialism IHTFP, representing the informal school motto "I Hate This Fucking Place" and jocularly euphemized as "I Have Truly Found Paradise", "Institute Has The Finest Professors", "Institute of Hacks, TomFoolery and Pranks", "It's Hard to Fondle Penguins", and other variations, has occasionally been featured on the ring given its historical prominence in student culture.
Caltech Rivalry
MIT also shares a well-known Caltech–MIT rivalry, rivalry with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), stemming from both institutions' reputations as two of the highest ranked and most highly recognized science and engineering schools in the world. The rivalry is an unusual college rivalry given its focus on academics and pranks instead of sports, and due to the geographic distance between the two (their campuses are separated by about 2970 miles and are on West Coast of the United States, opposite East Coast of the United States, coasts of the United States). In 2005, Caltech students pranked MIT's Campus Preview Weekend by distributing t-shirts that read "MIT" on the front, and "...because not everyone can go to Caltech" on the back. Additionally, the word Massachusetts in the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology" engraving on the exterior of the Lobby 7 dome was covered with a banner so that it read "That Other Institute of Technology." In 2006, MIT retaliated by posing as contractors and stealing the 1.7-ton, 130-year-old House System at the California Institute of Technology#Fleming cannon, Fleming cannon, a Caltech landmark. The cannon was relocated to Cambridge, where it was displayed in front of the Green Building (MIT), Green Building during the 2006 Campus Preview Weekend. In September 2010, MIT students unsuccessfully tried to place a life-sized model of the TARDIS time machine from the ''Doctor Who'' (1963–present) television series on top of Baxter Hall at Caltech. A few months later, Caltech students collaborated to help MIT students place the TARDIS on top of their originally planned destination. The rivalry has continued, most recently in 2014, when a group of Caltech students gave out mugs sporting the MIT logo on the front and the words "The Institute of Technology" on the back. When heated, the mugs turned orange and read, "Caltech, The Hotter Institute of Technology."
Activities
MIT has over 500 recognized student activity groups, including a WMBR, campus radio station, ''The Tech (newspaper), The Tech'' student newspaper, an annual MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition, entrepreneurship competition, a MIT Crime Club, crime club, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Student life and culture at MIT#Lecture Series Committee, Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf MIT Science Fiction Society, collection of science fiction" in English, a TMRC, model railroad club, and a vibrant Tech Squares, folk dance scene. Students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programs through the MIT Museum, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center.
Fraternities and sororities provide a base of activities in addition to housing. Approximately 1,000 undergrads, 48% of men and 30% of women, participate in one of several dozen Greek Life men's, women's and co-ed chapters on the campus.
The Student life and culture at MIT#Independent Activities Period, Independent Activities Period is a four-week-long "term" offering hundreds of optional classes, lectures, demonstrations, and other activities throughout the month of January between the Fall and Spring semesters. Some of the most popular recurring IAP activities are Autonomous Robot Design (course 6.270), Robocraft Programming (6.370), and MasLab Traditions and student activities at MIT#Competitions, competitions, the annual MIT Mystery Hunt, "mystery hunt", and Student life and culture at MIT#Charm School, Charm School. More than 250 students pursue externships annually at companies in the US and abroad.
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking", which encompasses both the Roof and tunnel hacking, physical exploration of areas that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, elaborate practical jokes. Examples of high-profile hacks have included the Caltech's rival, abduction of Caltech's cannon, reconstructing a Wright Flyer atop the Great Dome, and adorning the John Harvard (clergyman), John Harvard statue with the Master Chief (Halo), Master Chief's Mjölnir Helmet.
Athletics
MIT sponsors 31 varsity sports and has one of the three broadest NCAA Division III athletic programs. MIT participates in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA's Division III (NCAA), Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, the New England Football Conference, National Collegiate Athletic Association, NCAA's Division I Patriot League for women's crew, and the Collegiate Water Polo Association, Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) for Men's Water Polo. Men's crew competes outside the NCAA in the College rowing (United States)#Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges, Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC). The intercollegiate sports teams, called the MIT Engineers won 22 Team National Championships, 42 Individual National Championships. MIT is the all-time Division III leader in producing Academic All-Americas (302) and rank second across all NCAA Divisions only behind the University of Nebraska. MIT Athletes won 13 Elite 90 Award, Elite 90 awards and ranks first among NCAA Division III programs, and third among all divisions. In April 2009, budget cuts led to MIT eliminating eight of its 41 sports, including the mixed men's and women's teams in alpine skiing and pistol; separate teams for men and women in ice hockey and gymnastics; and men's programs in golf and wrestling.
People
Students
MIT enrolled 4,602 undergraduates and 6,972 graduate students in 2018–2019. Undergraduate and graduate students came from all 50 US states as well as from 115 foreign countries.
MIT received 33,240 applications for admission to the undergraduate Class of 2025: it admitted 1,365 (4.1 percent). In 2019, 29,114 applications were received for graduate and advanced degree programs across all departments; 3,670 were admitted (12.6 percent) and 2,312 enrolled (63 percent).
Undergraduate tuition and fees for 2019-2020 was $53,790 for nine months. 59% of students were awarded a need-based MIT scholarship. Graduate tuition and fees for 2019-2020 was also $53,790 for nine months, and summer tuition was $17,800. Financial support for graduate students are provided in large part by individual departments. They include fellowships, traineeships, teaching and research assistantships, and loans. The annual increase in expenses had led to a student tradition (dating back to the 1960s) of tongue-in-cheek "tuition riots".
MIT has been nominally co-educational since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards in 1870. Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in environmental health, sanitary chemistry. Female students remained a small minority prior to the completion of the first wing of a women's dormitory, Katherine Dexter McCormick, McCormick Hall, in 1963. Between 1993 and 2009 the proportion of women rose from 34 percent to 45 percent of undergraduates and from 20 percent to 31 percent of graduate students. , women outnumbered men in Biology, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Architecture, Urban Planning, and Biological Engineering.
Faculty and staff
, MIT had 1,069 Faculty (academic staff), faculty members. Faculty are responsible for lecturing classes, for advising both graduate and undergraduate students, and for sitting on academic committees, as well as for conducting original research. Between 1964 and 2009 a total of seventeen faculty and staff members affiliated with MIT won Nobel Prizes (thirteen of them in the latter 25 years). As of October 2020, 37 MIT faculty members, past or present, have won Nobel Prizes, the majority in Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, Economics or Nobel Prize in Physics, Physics.
, current faculty and teaching staff included 67 Guggenheim Fellows, 6 Fulbright Scholars, and 22 MacArthur Fellows. Faculty members who have made extraordinary contributions to their research field as well as the MIT community are granted appointments as Institute Professors for the remainder of their tenures. Susan Hockfield, a molecular neurobiology, neurobiologist, served as MIT's president from 2004 to 2012. She was the first woman to hold the post.
MIT faculty members have often been recruited to lead other colleges and universities. Founding faculty-member
Charles W. Eliot
Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was president of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909the longest term of any Harvard president. A member of the prominent Eliot family of Boston, he transfo ...
became president of Harvard University in 1869, a post he would hold for 40 years, during which he wielded considerable influence both on American higher education and on secondary education. MIT alumnus and faculty member George Ellery Hale played a central role in the development of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and other faculty members have been key founders of Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in nearby Needham, Massachusetts.
former provost Robert A. Brown served as president of Boston University; former provost Mark S. Wrighton, Mark Wrighton is chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis; former associate provost Alice Gast is president of Lehigh University; and former professor Suh Nam-pyo is president of KAIST. Former dean of the School of Science Robert J. Birgeneau was the chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley (2004–2013); former professor John Maeda was president of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD, 2008–2013); former professor David Baltimore was president of Caltech (1997–2006); and MIT alumnus and former assistant professor Hans Mark served as chancellor of the University of Texas system (1984–1992).
In addition, faculty members have been recruited to lead governmental agencies; for example, former professor Marcia McNutt is president of the National Academy of Sciences, urban studies professor Xavier de Souza Briggs served as the associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and biology professor Eric Lander was a co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In 2013, faculty member Ernest Moniz was nominated by President Obama and later confirmed as United States Secretary of Energy. Former professor Hans Mark served as Secretary of the Air Force from 1979 to 1981. Alumna and Institute Professor Sheila Widnall served as Secretary of the Air Force between 1993 and 1997, making her the first female Secretary of the Air Force and first woman to lead an entire branch of the US military in the Department of Defense.
, MIT was the second-largest employer in the city of Cambridge. Based on feedback from employees, MIT was ranked No. 7 as a place to work, among US colleges and universities . Surveys cited a "smart", "creative", "friendly" environment, noting that the work-life balance tilts towards a "strong work ethic" but complaining about "low pay" compared to an industry position.
Notable alumni
Many of MIT's over 120,000 alumni have achieved considerable success in scientific research, public service, education, and business sector, business. , 41 MIT alumni have won Nobel Prizes, 48 have been selected as Rhodes Scholars, 61 have been selected as Marshall Scholars, and 3 have been selected as Mitchell Scholarship, Mitchell Scholars.
Alumni in United States politics and public service include former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, former Massachusetts's 1st congressional district, MA-1 Representative John Olver, former California's 13th congressional district, CA-13 Representative Pete Stark, Representative Thomas Massie, Senator Alex Padilla, former United States National Economic Council, National Economic Council chairman Lawrence H. Summers, and former Council of Economic Advisers chairman Christina Romer. MIT alumni in international politics include Foreign Affairs Minister of Iran Ali Akbar Salehi, Prime Minister of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President of Colombia Virgilio Barco Vargas, President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi, former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan, former Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, British Foreign Minister David Miliband, former Prime Minister of Greece, Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former Council of Ministers of Iraq, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, former Minister of Education and Culture of The Republic of Indonesia Yahya Muhaimin, former Jordanian Minister of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research and former Jordanian Minister of Energy and Mineral Resources Khaled Toukan. Alumni in sports have included Olympic fencing champion Johan Harmenberg.
MIT alumni founded or co-founded many notable companies, such as Robert Noyce, Intel, James Smith McDonnell, McDonnell Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., Douglas, Cecil Howard Green, Texas Instruments, Robert Metcalfe, 3Com, Andrew Viterbi, Qualcomm, Amar Bose, Bose, Vannevar Bush, Raytheon, Apotex, Fred C. Koch, Koch Industries, Willard Rockwell, Rockwell International, Robert A. Swanson, Genentech, Drew Houston, Dropbox, and John Thompson Dorrance, Campbell Soup. According to the British newspaper ''The Guardian'', "a survey of living MIT alumni found that they have formed 25,800 companies, employing more than three million people including about a quarter of the workforce of Silicon Valley. Those firms collectively generate global revenues of about $1.9 trillion (£1.2 trillion) a year". If the companies founded by MIT alumni were a country, they would have the 11th-highest GDP of any country in the world.
MIT alumni have led prominent institutions of higher education, including the David S. Saxon, University of California system, Lawrence H. Summers, Harvard University, the Rahmat Shoureshi, New York Institute of Technology, William R. Brody, Johns Hopkins University, Subra Suresh, Carnegie Mellon University, Larry Bacow, Tufts University, Albert J. Simone, Rochester Institute of Technology, John Maeda, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Vishaan Chakrabarti, UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, the Allan Cullimore, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Joseph E. Aoun, Northeastern University, Joseph Klafter, Tel Aviv University, Adil Najam, Lahore University of Management Sciences, Shirley Jackson (physicist), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Eugenio Garza Sada, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Martin C. Jischke, Purdue University, T. Marshall Hahn, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Suh Nam-pyo, KAIST, and Pervez Hoodbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University. Berklee College of Music, the largest independent college of contemporary music in the world, was founded and led by MIT alumnus Lawrence Berk for more than three decades.
More than one third of the List of NASA missions#Human spaceflight, United States' crewed spaceflights have included List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni#Alumni Astronauts, MIT-educated astronauts, a contribution exceeding that of any university excluding the United States service academies. Of the List of Apollo astronauts, 12 people who have set foot on the Moon , four graduated from MIT (among them Apollo 11 Apollo Lunar Module, Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin). Alumnus and former faculty member Qian Xuesen led the China and weapons of mass destruction, Chinese nuclear-weapons program and became instrumental in Chinese rocket-program.
Noted alumni in non-scientific fields include author Hugh Lofting, sculptor Daniel Chester French, guitarist Tom Scholz of the band Boston (band), Boston, the British ''BBC'' and ''ITN'' correspondent and political advisor David Walter (British journalist and politician), David Walter, ''The New York Times'' columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman, ''The Bell Curve'' author Charles Murray (political scientist), Charles Murray, United States Supreme Court building architect Cass Gilbert,
Pritzker Prize-winning architects
I.M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei – website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...
and Gordon Bunshaft.
Buzz Aldrin.jpg, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, ScD 1963 (MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics)
Kofi Annan.jpg, Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, SM 1972 (MIT Sloan School of Management)
President Virgilio Barco.png, President of Colombia (1986–1990) Virgilio Barco Vargas, SB 1943 (MIT Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Ben Bernanke official portrait.jpg, Former Federal Reserve Bank chairman and 2022 Nobel Laureate Ben Bernanke, PhD 1979 (MIT Department of Economics)
Esther Duflo - Pop!Tech 2009 - 001 (cropped).jpg, Economics Nobel laureate Esther Duflo, PhD 1999 (MIT Department of Economics), also an MIT professor
Richard Feynman Nobel.jpg, Physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman, SB 1939 (MIT Department of Physics)
Edward Michael Fincke.jpg, Astronaut and USAF Colonel Michael Fincke, SB 1989 (MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics), SB 1989 (MIT Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences)
Daniel Chester French 1902 crop.jpg, Sculptor Daniel Chester French, Did not graduate
Paul Krugman-press conference Dec 07th, 2008-8.jpg, Economics Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, PhD 1977 (MIT Department of Economics)
Ronald mcnair.jpg, STS-51-L, Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' astronaut and physicist Ronald McNair, PhD 1976 (MIT Department of Physics)
Benjamin Netanyahu.jpg, Israeli Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, SB 1975 (MIT Architecture), SM 1976 (MIT Sloan School of Management)
I.M. Pei.JPG, Architect I. M. Pei, BArch 1940 (MIT Architecture)
ClaudeShannon MFO3807.jpg, Claude Shannon, PhD 1940 (MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
Alfred P. Sloan on the cover of TIME Magazine, December 27, 1926.jpg, CEO of General Motors Alfred P. Sloan, SB 1895 (MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)
TomScholz.JPG, "Boston (band), Boston" guitarist Tom Scholz, SB 1969, SM 1970 (MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Michael Massimino.jpg, Astronaut and engineer Mike Massimino, PhD 1992 (MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering)
Robert Woodward Nobel.jpg, Chemist and Nobel laureate Robert Burns Woodward, SB 1936, PhD 1937
See also
*Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Engineering
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Whitehead Institute
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research institute located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States that is dedicated to improving human health through basic biomedical research. It was founded as a fiscally indepen ...
*Broad Institute, Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
*Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
*Harvard/MIT Cooperative Society, The Coop, campus bookstore
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