Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(also known as Course 18) is one of the leading mathematics departments in the US
and the world. In the 2010
US 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 ...
ranking of US graduate programs, the department was ranked number one, while the second place was a 4-way tie among Harvard,
Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
UC Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
.
The current faculty of around 50 members includes
Wolf Prize
The Wolf Prize is an international award granted in Israel, that has been presented most years since 1978 to living scientists and artists for ''"achievements in the interest of mankind and friendly relations among people ... irrespective of nati ...
winner
Michael Artin
Michael Artin (; born 28 June 1934) is a German-American mathematician and a professor emeritus in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology mathematics department, known for his contributions to algebraic geometry.Shaw Prize winner George Lusztig,
Gödel Prize
The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interes ...
winner
Peter Shor
Peter Williston Shor (born August 14, 1959) is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT. He is known for his work on quantum computation, in particular for devising Shor's algorithm, a quantum algorithm for factoring exponentially f ...
, and numerical analyst
Gilbert Strang
William Gilbert Strang (born November 27, 1934), usually known as simply Gilbert Strang or Gil Strang, is an American mathematician, with contributions to finite element theory, the calculus of variations, wavelet analysis and linear algebr ...
.
History
Originally under
John Daniel Runkle
John Daniel Runkle (October 11, 1822 – July 8, 1902) was a U.S. educator and mathematician. He served as acting president of MIT from 1868–70 and president between 1870 and 1878.
Biography
Professor Runkle was born at Root, New York State. He ...
, mathematics at MIT was regarded as service teaching for engineers. Harry W Tyler succeeded Runkle after his death in 1902, and continued as head until 1930. Tyler had been exposed to modern European mathematics and was influenced by
Felix Klein
Christian Felix Klein (; 25 April 1849 – 22 June 1925) was a German mathematician and mathematics educator, known for his work with group theory, complex analysis, non-Euclidean geometry, and on the associations between geometry and grou ...
and
Max Noether
Max Noether (24 September 1844 – 13 December 1921) was a German mathematician who worked on algebraic geometry and the theory of algebraic functions. He has been called "one of the finest mathematicians of the nineteenth century". He was the f ...
. Much of the early work was on geometry.
Norbert Wiener, famous for his contribution to the mathematics of signal processing, joined the MIT faculty in 1919. By 1920, the department started publishing the ''
Journal of Mathematics and Physics
The journal ''Studies in Applied Mathematics'' is published by Wiley–Blackwell on behalf of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
It features scholarly articles on mathematical applications in allied fields, notably computer science, ...
'' (in 1969 renamed as '' Studies in Applied Mathematics''), a sign of its growing confidence; the first PhD was conferred to James E Taylor in 1925.
Among illustrious members of the faculty were
Norman Levinson
Norman Levinson (August 11, 1912 in Lynn, Massachusetts – October 10, 1975 in Boston) was an American mathematician. Some of his major contributions were in the study of Fourier transforms, complex analysis, non-linear differential equation ...
and
Gian-Carlo Rota
Gian-Carlo Rota (April 27, 1932 – April 18, 1999) was an Italian-American mathematician and philosopher. He spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked in combinatorics, functional analysis, proba ...
. George B. Thomas wrote the widely used calculus textbook ''Calculus and Analytical Geometry'', known today as ''Thomas' Calculus''. Longtime faculty member
Arthur Mattuck
Arthur Paul Mattuck (June 11, 1930 – October 8, 2021) was an emeritus professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He may be best known for his 1998 book, ''Introduction to Analysis'' () and his differential equations ...
received several awards for his teaching of MIT undergraduates.
References
* Joel Segel (editor) (2009) ''Recountings - Conversations with MIT Mathematicians'', AK Peters