Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Encyclopedia
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private
research university located in Cambridge
, Massachusetts
. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.
Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the institute adopted the European polytechnic university model
and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. MIT's early emphasis on applied technology at the undergraduate and graduate levels led to close cooperation with industry. Curricular reforms under Karl Compton and Vannevar Bush
in the 1930s re-emphasized basic scientific research. MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities
in 1934. Researchers were involved in efforts to develop computers
, radar
, and inertial guidance
in connection with defense research during World War II
and the Cold War
. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian
.
The current 168 acres (68 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 miles (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin
. In the past 60 years, MIT's educational disciplines have expanded beyond the physical science
s and engineering
into fields such as biology
, economics
, linguistics
, political science
, and management.
MIT enrolled 4,299 undergraduates and 6,267 graduate students for 2010–2011. It employs around 1,000 faculty members. 77 Nobel laureates
, 50 National Medal of Science
recipients, and 38 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university.
MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture. The aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world. MIT managed $718.2 million in research expenditures and an $8.0 billion endowment in 2009.
The "Engineers" sponsor 33 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA
Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.
was given a proposal for use of newly opened lands in Back Bay
in Boston
for a museum and Conservatory of Art and Science. On April 10, 1861, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signed a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History
", submitted by William Barton Rogers
. Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology during the mid-19th century with which classic institutions
were ill-prepared to deal. Barton believed, “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, their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”
The Rogers Plan, as it has come to be known, reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories. Rogers proposed that this new form of education be rooted in three principles: the educational value of useful knowledge, the necessity of “learning by doing”, and integrating a professional and liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.
However, open conflict in the Civil War
broke out on April 12, 1861, just two days after issuance of the charter. After years of delay caused by wartime funding and staffing difficulties, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston
in 1865. Though it was to be located in the middle of urban Boston, the mission of the new institute matched the intent of the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Although the Commonwealth of Massachusetts separately founded what was to become the University of Massachusetts
under this act, MIT was also named a land grant school. The proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood in 1866, and MIT informally came to be called "Boston Tech".
During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs. During this period, the MIT faculty and alumni repeatedly rejected overtures from former MIT faculty turned Harvard University
president Charles W. Eliot, to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School.
Industrialist George Eastman
reinforced MIT's independence by donating funds to build a new campus along a mile-long tract on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, almost entirely on landfill
. In 1916, MIT moved into the handsome new neoclassical campus
designed by William W. Bosworth
.
In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton
and Vice-President (effectively Provost
) Vannevar Bush
drastically reformed the applied technology curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and by reducing the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. In sharp contrast to the Ivy League
, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants. Despite the challenges of the Great Depression
, the Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering." The expansion and reforms cemented MIT's academic reputation and the school was elected to the Association of American Universities
in 1934.
MIT was substantially changed by its involvement in military research during World War II. Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the enormous Office of Scientific Research and Development
and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. MIT's Radiation Laboratory
was established in 1940 to assist the British military
in developing a microwave
radar
, and the first mass-produced equipments were installed on front-line units within months. Other defense projects included gyroscope
-based and other complex control system
s for gun and bombsight
s and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper
's Instrumentation Laboratory
, the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind, and high-speed and high-altitude
photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, MIT employed a staff of over 4,000 (including more than a fifth of the nation's physicist
s) and was the nation's single largest wartime R&D contractor.
In the post-war years, government-sponsored research
such as SAGE
and guidance systems for ballistic missile
s and Project Apollo
, combined with surging student enrollments under the G.I. Bill, contributed to rapid growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant, as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education. The profound changes that occurred at MIT between 1930 and 1957 included the doubling of its faculty and a quintupling of its graduate student population. These changes were significantly guided and shaped by the institution-building strategies of Karl Taylor Compton
, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948, James Rhyne Killian
, president from 1948 to 1957, and Julius Adams Stratton
, chancellor from 1952 to 1957.
While the school mainly served the needs of industrial patrons in the 1920s, by the 1950s it had gained considerable autonomy from industrial corporations while attracting new patrons and building a close relationship with philanthropic foundations and the federal government. As the Cold War
and Space Race
intensified and concerns about the technology gap
between the US and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the military-industrial complex
was a source of pride on campus.
Following a comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum in 1949 and the successive appointments of more humanistically oriented
Presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner
between 1966 and 1980, MIT greatly expanded its programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors, launching competitive graduate programs, and forming into the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
and the MIT Sloan School of Management
in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science
and Engineering
.
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War
and MIT's defense research
. The Union of Concerned Scientists
was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research towards environmental and social problems. Although MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory
and moved all classified research off-campus to the Lincoln Laboratory
facility in 1973 in response to the protests, the student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during the tumultuous era.
In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking
technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at the Project MAC, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
, and Tech Model Railroad Club
wrote some of the earliest interactive computer games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang
. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s; Richard Stallman
's GNU Project
and the subsequent Free Software Foundation
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
standards organization
was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science
in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee
, the OpenCourseWare
project has made course materials for over 1,800 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. Upon taking office in 2004, President Hockfield launched an Energy Research Council to investigate how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of increasing global energy consumption
.
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 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, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics
, biotechnology
, and cancer research, and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center
. Construction on campus has recently concluded an expansion of the Media Lab, the Sloan's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest.
basin in the city of Cambridge
. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, 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 Kendall MBTA Red Line
station is located on the far 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.
MIT buildings all have a number (or a number and a letter) 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 are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground 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 largest university-based nuclear reactor
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. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel
and a towing tank
for testing ship and ocean structure designs. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9400000 square feet (873,288.6 m²) of campus.
In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency
sued MIT for violating Clean Water Act
and Clean Air Act
with regard to its hazardous waste
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
plant that serves most of the campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements.
Between 2006 and 2008, MIT reported 16 forcible sex offenses, 4 robberies, 13 aggravated assaults, 536 burglaries, 2 cases of arson, and 16 cases of motor vehicle theft.
MIT's School of Architecture
, now the School of Architecture and Planning, was the first 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 known officially as the Maclaurin buildings after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of concrete, a first for a non-industrial — much less university — building in the US. The utopian City Beautiful movement
greatly influenced Bosworth's design, which features the Pantheon
-esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where annual Commencement (graduation) exercises are held. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers. The imposing Building 7 atrium along Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor
and the rest of the campus.
Alvar Aalto
's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen
's Chapel and Auditorium (1955), and I.M. Pei's Green, Dreyfus, Landau, and Wiesner buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture. More recent buildings like Frank Gehry
's Stata Center
(2004), Steven Holl
's Simmons Hall (2002), Charles Correa
's Building 46 (2005), Fumihiko Maki
's Media Lab Extension (2009) are distinctive amongst the Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture." These buildings have not always been popularly acclaimed; in 2010, The Princeton Review
included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both."
Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 12 undergrad dormitories, although 8% of students live off campus or commute. On-campus housing provides live-in graduate student tutors and faculty housemasters who have the dual role of both helping students and monitoring them for medical or mental health problems. New undergrad students specify their dorm and floor preferences a few days after arrival on campus, and as a result diverse communities arise in living groups; e.g. the dorms on and east of Massachusetts Avenue have typically been more involved in countercultural
activities. MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.
MIT has a very active Greek and co-op system which includes 36 fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs). 50% of male undergraduates join a fraternity and 34% of women join sororities. Most FSILGs are located across the river in the Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there, but eight fraternities are located on MIT's West Campus and in Cambridge. After the 1997 death of Scott Krueger, a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta
fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002. Because the fraternities and independent living groups had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy did not take effect until 2002 after Simmons Hall opened.
MIT is chartered as a non-profit organization and is owned and governed by a privately appointed board of trustees 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, three elected officers (President, Treasurer, and Secretary), and four ex officio members including the president of the alumni association, the Governor of Massachusetts
, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, and the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
. The board is chaired by John S. Reed
, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
and Citigroup
. The corporation approves the budget, new programs, degrees, and faculty appointments as well as electing the President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and presiding over the Institute's faculty. The sixteenth and current president, Susan Hockfield
, a molecular neurobiologist, succeeded Charles M. Vest's fourteen year tenure in December 2004 and is the first woman to hold the post. MIT's endowment
and other financial assets
are managed through a subsidiary MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo). Valued at $8.0 billion in 2009, MIT's endowment is the sixth-largest among American colleges and universities.
MIT is "a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts." It has five schools (Science
, Engineering
, Architecture and Planning
, Management
, and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
) and one college (Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology), but no schools of law or medicine. 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. However, faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs.
The university historically pioneered research and training collaborations between the academy, industry and government. Fruitful collaborations with industrialists like Alfred P. Sloan
and Thomas Alva Edison led President Compton to establish an Office of Corporate Relations and an Industrial Liaison Program in the 1930s and 1940s that now allows over 600 companies to license research
and consult with MIT faculty and researchers. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, American politicians and business leaders accused MIT and other universities of contributing to a declining economy
by transferring
taxpayer-funded research and technology to international — especially Japanese
— firms that were competing with struggling American businesses.
MIT's extensive collaboration with the federal government on research projects has also led to several MIT leaders serving as Presidential scientific advisers
since 1940. MIT established a Washington Office in 1991 to continue to lobby
for research funding and national science policy
. In response to MIT, eight Ivy League
colleges, and 11 other institutions holding "Overlap Meetings" to prevent bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships, the Justice Department
began an antitrust investigation in 1989 and in 1991 filed an antitrust suit
against these universities. While the Ivy League institutions settled
, MIT contested the charges on the grounds 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 proximity to Harvard University
has created both a quasi-friendly rivalry ("the other school up the river
") and a substantial number of research collaborations such as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
and Broad Institute
. In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register
for credits toward their own school's degrees without any additional fees. A cross-registration program with Wellesley College has existed since 1969 and a significant undergraduate exchange program with the University of Cambridge
known as the Cambridge-MIT Institute
was also launched in 2002. MIT has more modest cross-registration programs 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 like the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
as well as international research and educational collaborations through the Singapore-MIT Alliance
, MIT-Politecnico di Milano, MIT-Zaragoza
International Logistics Program, and other countries through the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program.
The mass-market magazine Technology Review
is published by MIT through a subsidiary company, as is a special edition that also serves as the Institute's official alumni magazine. The MIT Press
is a major university press, publishing over 200 books and 40 journals annually emphasizing science and technology as well as arts, architecture, new media, current events, and social issues.
by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges
since 1929. MIT operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall semester beginning after Labor Day and ending in mid-December, a 4-week "Independent Activities Period" in the month of January, and the spring semester beginning in early February and ending in late May.
The School of Engineering has been ranked first among graduate and undergraduate programs by U.S. News & World Report
since the first published results in 1994. MIT has also consistently ranked first in the Academic Ranking of World Universities
in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences. A 1995 National Research Council
study of US research universities ranked MIT first in "reputation" and fourth in "citations and faculty awards" and a 2005 NBER
study of high school students' revealed preference
s found MIT to be the 4th most preferred college in the nation.
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 their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course I, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII. Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI." MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; the introductory calculus-based classical mechanics
course is simply "8.01" at MIT.
(abbreviated as SB, from the Latin expression Scientiæ Baccalaureus) degrees were granted, the only type of undergraduate degree MIT now awards. The School of Engineering is the most popular division, enrolling 44.5% of students in its 19 degree programs, followed by the School of Science (20.2%), School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (3.5%), Sloan School of Management (3.5%), and the School of Architecture and Planning (1.8%). The largest undergraduate degree programs are in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course VI-2), Mechanical Engineering (Course II), Computer Science and Engineering (Course VI-3), Physics (Course VIII), Biology (Course VII), and Mathematics (Course XVIII).
Undergraduates are required to complete an extensive 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, one semester of biology, and a laboratory class in their major. The humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) requirement, consisting of eight semesters, includes a distribution of three classes across each of the humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as a concentration. The communication requirement consists of two communication-intensive HASS classes and two classes in their major program. Finally, all students are required to complete a swimming test and non-varsity athletes must also take four physical education
classes.
Although the difficulty and especially the fast pace of MIT coursework has been characterized as "drinking from a fire hose," the freshmen retention rate at MIT is similar to other national research universities. Some of the pressure for first-year undergraduates is lessened by the existence of the "pass/no-record" grading system. In the first (fall) term, freshmen transcripts only report if a class was passed while no external record exists if a class was not passed. In the second (spring) term, passing grades (ABC) appear on the transcript while non-passing grades are again rendered "no-record". The system had previously been "Pass/No Record" all freshman year, but was amended for the Class of 2006 to prevent students from gaming the system by completing required major classes on a pass/fail basis.
Most classes rely upon a combination of faculty led lectures, graduate student led recitations, weekly problem sets (p-sets), and tests to teach material, though alternative curricula exist, e.g. Experimental Study Group
, Concourse
, and Terrascope. In recent years, there has been a trend towards "unified" mainstream introductory courses (e.g. in the Physics and the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments), incorporating a coordinated curriculum of theory and hands-on laboratory experiences.
In the past, some organized student groups have compiled "course bibles", collections of problem set and examination questions and answers used as references for later students. In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum
, arguing that unwritten regulations, like the implicit curricula of the bibles, are often counterproductive; they fool professors into believing that their teaching is effective and students into believing they have learned the material. For further coverage of this topic, see History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology#Course "Bibles".
In 1969, MIT began the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. The program, founded by Margaret MacVicar
, builds upon the MIT philosophy of "learning by doing". Students join or initiate research projects, colloquially called "UROPs", through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly. Over 2,800 undergraduates, 70% of the student body, participate every year for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis. Students often become published
, file patent application
s, and/or launch start-up companies
based upon their experience in UROPs.
fields as well as offering professional degrees. The Institute offers graduate programs leading to academic degrees such as the Master of Science (SM), various Engineer's Degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), and Doctor of Science (ScD); professional degrees such as Master of Architecture (MArch), Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of City Planning (MCP), Master of Engineering (MEng), and Master of Finance (MFin); and interdisciplinary graduate programs such as the MD/PhD
(with Harvard Medical School
). Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. Doctoral students are supported by fellowships (30%), research assistantships (49%), and teaching assistantships (13%).
MIT awarded 1,474 master's degrees and 607 doctoral degrees in 2009. The School of Engineering is the most popular academic division enrolling 45.4% of graduate students, followed by the Sloan School of Management (17.3%), School of Science (17.3%), School of Architecture and Planning (9.5%), School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (4.9%), and Whitaker College of Health Sciences (2.5%). The largest graduate degree programs are the Sloan MBA, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.
was founded in 1971 and collects, preserves, and exhibits artifacts significant to the life and history of MIT as well as collaborating with the nearby Museum of Science.
in 1934 and remains a research university with a very high level of research activity; research expenditures totaled $718.2 million in 2009. The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the Department of Health and Human Services granting $255.9 million, Department of Defense
$97.5 million, Department of Energy
$65.8 million, National Science Foundation
$61.4 million, and NASA
$27.4 million. MIT employs approximately 1300 researchers in addition to faculty. In 2009, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 530 inventions, filed 184 patent applications, received 166 patents, and earned $136.3 million in royalties and other income.
In electronics, magnetic core memory
, radar
, 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
. 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 cybernetics
, artificial intelligence
, computer languages
, machine learning
, robotics
, and cryptography. At least nine Turing Award
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 Prizes
, four 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 Prizes
and one Wolf Prize for the discovery of novel syntheses and methods. MIT biologists have been awarded six 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
, synthetic self-replicating molecules
, and the genetic bases for 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".
In the domain of humanities, arts, and social sciences, MIT economists have been awarded five Nobel Prizes and nine John Bates Clark Medal
s. Linguists Noam Chomsky
and Morris Halle
authored seminal texts on generative grammar
and phonology
. The MIT Media Lab
, founded in 1985 within the School of Architecture and Planning
and known for its unconventional research, has been home to influential researchers such as constructivist
educator and Logo
creator Seymour Papert
.
Spanning many of the above fields, MacArthur Fellowships (the so-called "Genius Grants") have been awarded to 38 people associated with MIT. Four 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.
Given MIT's prominence, allegations of research misconduct or improprieties have received substantial press coverage. Professor David Baltimore
, a 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
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.
and technical proficiency. MIT has never awarded an honorary degree
, nor does it award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degree
s, or Latin honors
upon graduation. However, MIT has twice awarded honorary professorships; to Winston Churchill
in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.
Many 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 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," "It's Hard to Fondle Penguins," and other variations, has occasionally been featured on the ring given its historical prominence in student culture.
, The Tech student newspaper, an annual entrepreneurship competition
, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction
" in English, a model railroad club, and a vibrant 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.
The 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 the 6.270, 6.370, and MasLab competitions, the annual "mystery hunt"
, and Charm School. Students also have the opportunity of pursuing externships at companies in the US and abroad.
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking," which encompasses both the physical exploration of areas
that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as elaborate practical jokes
. Recent high-profile hacks have included the theft of Caltech's
cannon, reconstructing a Wright Flyer
atop the Great Dome, and adorning the John Harvard
statue with the Master Chief's Spartan Helmet
.
The student athletics program offers 33 varsity-level sports, which makes it one of the largest programs in the US MIT participates in the NCAA's
Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
, the New England Football Conference
, the Pilgrim League
for men's lacrosse and NCAA's
Division I Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) for crew. In April 2009, budget cuts lead 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.
The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot
since 1914 being a beaver
, "nature's engineer." Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification:
MIT fielded several dominant intercollegiate Tiddlywinks
teams through 1980, winning national and world championships. The Engineers have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, taekwondo, track and field, swimming and diving, cross country, crew, fencing, and water polo. MIT has produced 128 Academic All-Americans
, the third largest membership in the country for any division and the highest number of members for Division III.
The Zesiger sports and fitness center
(Z-Center) which opened in 2002, significantly expanded the capacity and quality of MIT's athletics, physical education, and recreation offerings to 10 buildings and 26 acres (105,218.4 m²) of playing fields. The 124000 square feet (11,520 m²) facility features an Olympic-class swimming pool, international-scale squash courts, and a two-story fitness center.
MIT enrolled 4,232 undergraduates and 6,152 graduate students in 2009–2010. Women constituted 45.3 percent of undergraduates and 31.1 percent of graduate students. Undergraduate and graduate students are drawn from all 50 states as well as 118 foreign countries.
MIT received 15,661 applications for admission to the Class of 2014; 1675 were admitted (10.7 percent) and 1078 enrolled (63.9 percent). 19,446 applications were received for advanced degree program across all departments; 2,991 were admitted (15.4 percent) and 1,880 enrolled (62.8 percent). The interquartile range
on the SAT was 2030–2320 and 95 percent of students ranked in the top tenth of their high school graduating class. 97 percent of the Class of 2012 returned as sophomores; 82.3 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated within 4 years, and 91.3 percent (92 percent of the men and 96 percent of the women) graduated within 6 years.
Undergraduate tuition and fees total $37,782 and annual expenses are estimated at $50,100. 61 percent of students received need-based financial aid in the form of scholarships and grants from federal, state, institutional, and external sources averaging $35,202 per student. MIT awarded $87.6 million in scholarships and grants, the vast majority ($73.4 million) coming from institutional support. The annual increase in expenses has led to a student tradition (dating back to the 1960s) of tongue-in-cheek "tuition riots".
MIT has been nominally coeducation
al since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards
in 1870. Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in sanitary chemistry
. Female students remained a very small minority (less than 3 percent) prior to the completion of the first wing of a women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1962. 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 currently outnumber men in Biology, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Architecture, Urban Planning, and Biological Engineering.
A number of student deaths in the late 1990s and early 2000s resulted in considerable media attention to MIT's culture and student life. After the alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger in September 1997 as a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta
fraternity, MIT began requiring all freshmen to live in the dormitory system. The 2000 suicide of MIT undergraduate Elizabeth Shin
drew attention to suicides at MIT and created a controversy over whether MIT had an unusually high suicide rate. In late 2001 a task force's recommended improvements in student mental health
services were implemented, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center. These and later cases were significant as well because they sought to prove the negligence and liability of university administrators in loco parentis
.
MIT has 1,010 faculty members, of whom 198 are women. Faculty are responsible for lecturing classes, advising both graduate and undergraduate students, and sitting on academic committees, as well as conducting original research. Between 1964 and 2009, a total of 17 faculty and staff members affiliated with MIT were awarded Nobel Prizes (14 during the last quarter century, 13 the last 25 years). MIT faculty members
past or present have won a total of 27 Nobel Prize
s, the majority in Economics or Physics. Among current faculty and teaching staff, there are 80 Guggenheim Fellows, 6 Fulbright Scholars, and 29 MacArthur Fellows. Faculty members who have made extraordinary contributions to their research field as well as the MIT community are granted appointments as Institute Professor
s for the remainder of their tenures.
A 1998 MIT study concluded that a systemic bias against female faculty existed in its college of science, although the study's methods were controversial. Since the study, though, women have headed departments within the Schools of Science and Engineering, and MIT has appointed several female vice presidents, although allegations of sexism continue to be made. Susan Hockfield
, a molecular neurobiologist, became MIT's 16th president in 2004 and is the first woman to hold the post.
Tenure outcomes have vaulted MIT into the national spotlight on several occasions. The 1984 dismissal of David F. Noble
, a historian of technology, became a cause célèbre
about the extent to which academics are granted freedom of speech
after he published several books and papers critical of MIT's and other research universities' reliance upon financial support from corporations and the military. Former materials science professor Gretchen Kalonji sued MIT in 1994 alleging that she was denied tenure because of sexual discrimination. In 1997, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
issued a probable cause finding supporting James Jennings' allegations of racial discrimination after a senior faculty search committee in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning did not offer him reciprocal tenure. In 2006–2007, MIT's denial of tenure to African-American biological engineering professor James Sherley
reignited accusations of racism in the tenure process, eventually leading to a protracted public dispute with the administration, a brief hunger strike
, and the resignation of Professor Frank L. Douglas
in protest.
MIT faculty members have often been recruited to lead other colleges and universities; former Provost Robert A. Brown
is President of Boston University
, former Provost Mark Wrighton
is Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis
, former Associate Provost Alice Gast
is president of Lehigh University
, former Dean of the School of Science Robert J. Birgeneau is the Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley
, and former professor David Baltimore
had been President of Caltech. In addition, faculty members have been recruited to lead governmental agencies; for example, former professor Marcia McNutt
is the director of the United States Geological Survey
, urban studies professor Xavier de Souza Briggs is currently the associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and biology professor Eric Lander
is a co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Alumni in American politics and public service include Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Ben Bernanke
, MA-1
Representative John Olver
, CA-13
Representative Pete Stark
, former National Economic Council chairman Lawrence H. Summers, and former Council of Economic Advisors chairwoman Christina Romer
. MIT alumni in international politics include former British Foreign Minister
David Miliband
, Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu
, Greek Prime Minister
Lucas Papademos
, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
, physicist
Richard Feynman
, and former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Ahmed Chalabi
.
MIT alumni founded or co-founded many notable companies, such as Intel
, McDonnell
Douglas
, Texas Instruments
, 3Com
, Qualcomm
, Bose
, Raytheon
, Koch Industries
, Rockwell International
, Genentech
, and 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 between them generate global revenues of about $1.9tn (£1.2tn) a year. If MIT was a country, it would have the 11th highest GDP of any nation in the world." MIT managed $718.2 million in research expenditures and an $8.0 billion endowment in 2009.
Prominent institutions of higher education have been led by MIT alumni, including the University of California
system, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University
, Carnegie Mellon University
, Tufts University, Rochester Institute of Technology
, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Northeastern University, Lahore University of Management Sciences
, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
, Tecnológico de Monterrey
, Purdue University
, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and Quaid-e-Azam University
.
More than one third of the United States' manned spaceflights have included MIT-educated astronauts (among them Apollo 11
Lunar Module
Pilot Buzz Aldrin
), more than any university excluding the United States service academies.
Noted alumni in non-scientific fields include author Hugh Lofting
, sculptor Daniel Chester French
, Boston
guitarist Tom Scholz
, The New York Times
columnist and Nobel Prize Winning economist Paul Krugman
, The Bell Curve
author Charles Murray
, United States Supreme Court building
architect Cass Gilbert
, Pritzker Prize
-winning architects I.M. Pei and Gordon Bunshaft
.
Private university
Private universities are universities not operated by governments, although many receive public subsidies, especially in the form of tax breaks and public student loans and grants. Depending on their location, private universities may be subject to government regulation. Private universities are...
research university located in Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.
Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the institute adopted the European polytechnic university model
History of European research universities
European research universities date from the founding of the University of Bologna in 1088 or the University of Paris . In the 19th and 20th centuries, European universities concentrated upon science and research, their structures and philosophies having shaped the contemporary university...
and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. MIT's early emphasis on applied technology at the undergraduate and graduate levels led to close cooperation with industry. Curricular reforms under Karl Compton and Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
in the 1930s re-emphasized basic scientific research. MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities
Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities is an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education...
in 1934. Researchers were involved in efforts to develop computers
Whirlwind (computer)
The Whirlwind computer was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is the first computer that operated in real time, used video displays for output, and the first that was not simply an electronic replacement of older mechanical systems...
, radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
, and inertial guidance
Inertial navigation system
An inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...
in connection with defense research during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
and the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian
James Killian
James Kilian is a professional American and Canadian football quarterback who is currently a free agent. He was drafted in the seventh round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Kansas City Chiefs...
.
The current 168 acres (68 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 miles (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
. In the past 60 years, MIT's educational disciplines have expanded beyond the physical science
Physical science
Physical science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science and science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the life sciences...
s and engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
into fields such as biology
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
, economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, political science
Political science
Political Science is a social science discipline concerned with the study of the state, government and politics. Aristotle defined it as the study of the state. It deals extensively with the theory and practice of politics, and the analysis of political systems and political behavior...
, and management.
MIT enrolled 4,299 undergraduates and 6,267 graduate students for 2010–2011. It employs around 1,000 faculty members. 77 Nobel laureates
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
, 50 National Medal of Science
National Medal of Science
The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in science and engineering who have made important contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the fields of behavioral and social sciences, biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and...
recipients, and 38 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university.
MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture. The aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would rank as the eleventh-largest economy in the world. MIT managed $718.2 million in research expenditures and an $8.0 billion endowment in 2009.
The "Engineers" sponsor 33 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
The New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference is an intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA’s Division III...
; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.
Foundation and early years (1857–1917)
In 1859, the Massachusetts General CourtMassachusetts General Court
The Massachusetts General Court is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the Colonial Era, when this body also sat in judgment of judicial appeals cases...
was given a proposal for use of newly opened lands in Back Bay
Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts
Back Bay is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts famous for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes, which are considered one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States, as well as numerous architecturally significant individual...
in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
for a museum and Conservatory of Art and Science. On April 10, 1861, the Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts signed a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History
Boston Society of Natural History
The Boston Society of Natural History in Boston, Massachusetts, was an organization dedicated to the study and promotion of natural history. It published a scholarly journal and established a museum. In its first few decades, the society occupied several successive locations in Boston's Financial...
", submitted by William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers
William Barton Rogers was a geologist, physicist and educator. He is best known for setting down the founding principles for, advocating for, and finally obtaining the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1861...
. Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology during the mid-19th century with which classic institutions
Liberal arts college
A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...
were ill-prepared to deal. Barton believed, “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, their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws.”
However, open conflict in the Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
broke out on April 12, 1861, just two days after issuance of the charter. After years of delay caused by wartime funding and staffing difficulties, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1865. Though it was to be located in the middle of urban Boston, the mission of the new institute matched the intent of the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act
The Morrill Land-Grant Acts are United States statutes that allowed for the creation of land-grant colleges, including the Morrill Act of 1862 and the Morrill Act of 1890 -Passage of original bill:...
to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Although the Commonwealth of Massachusetts separately founded what was to become the University of Massachusetts
University of Massachusetts
This article relates to the statewide university system. For the flagship campus often referred to as "UMass", see University of Massachusetts Amherst...
under this act, MIT was also named a land grant school. The proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood in 1866, and MIT informally came to be called "Boston Tech".
During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs. During this period, the MIT faculty and alumni repeatedly rejected overtures from former MIT faculty turned Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
president Charles W. Eliot, to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School.
Development and post-war growth (1916–1965)
George Eastman
George Eastman was an American innovator and entrepreneur who founded the Eastman Kodak Company and invented roll film, helping to bring photography to the mainstream...
reinforced MIT's independence by donating funds to build a new campus along a mile-long tract on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, almost entirely on landfill
Landfill
A landfill site , is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment...
. In 1916, MIT moved into the handsome new neoclassical campus
Neoclassical architecture
Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...
designed by William W. Bosworth
William W. Bosworth
William Welles Bosworth was an American architect whose most famous designs include MIT's Cambridge campus, the AT&T Building in New York City, and the Theodore N. Vail mansion in Morristown, New Jersey , now the Morristown Town Hall...
.
In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948.- The early years :...
and Vice-President (effectively Provost
Provost (education)
A provost is the senior academic administrator at many institutions of higher education in the United States, Canada and Australia, the equivalent of a pro-vice-chancellor at some institutions in the United Kingdom and Ireland....
) Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
drastically reformed the applied technology curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and by reducing the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. In sharp contrast to the Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants. Despite the challenges of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, the Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering." The expansion and reforms cemented MIT's academic reputation and the school was elected to the Association of American Universities
Association of American Universities
The Association of American Universities is an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education...
in 1934.
MIT was substantially changed by its involvement in military research during World War II. Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the enormous Office of Scientific Research and Development
Office of Scientific Research and Development
The Office of Scientific Research and Development was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by on June 28, 1941...
and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. MIT's Radiation Laboratory
Radiation Laboratory
The Radiation Laboratory, commonly called the Rad Lab, was located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts and functioned from October 1940 until December 31, 1945...
was established in 1940 to assist the British military
Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II
Britain along with most of its dominions and Crown colonies, and British India, declared war on Nazi Germany in 1939. War with Japan began in 1941, after it attacked British colonies in Asia...
in developing a microwave
Cavity magnetron
The cavity magnetron is a high-powered vacuum tube that generates microwaves using the interaction of a stream of electrons with a magnetic field. The 'resonant' cavity magnetron variant of the earlier magnetron tube was invented by John Randall and Harry Boot in 1940 at the University of...
radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
, and the first mass-produced equipments were installed on front-line units within months. Other defense projects included gyroscope
Gyroscope
A gyroscope is a device for measuring or maintaining orientation, based on the principles of angular momentum. In essence, a mechanical gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disk whose axle is free to take any orientation...
-based and other complex control system
Control system
A control system is a device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...
s for gun and bombsight
Bombsight
A bombsight is a device used by bomber aircraft to accurately drop bombs. In order to do this, the bombsight has to estimate the path the bomb will take after release from the aircraft. The two primary forces during its fall are gravity and air drag, which makes the path of the bomb through the air...
s and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper
Charles Stark Draper
Charles Stark Draper was an American scientist and engineer, often referred to as "the father of inertial navigation." He was the founder and director of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, later renamed the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, which under his direction designed and built the Apollo...
's Instrumentation Laboratory
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
, the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind, and high-speed and high-altitude
Espionage balloon
An espionage balloon is a balloon used for spying.Espionage balloons were a development of the observation balloons used even before the World War I behind the front line...
photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, MIT employed a staff of over 4,000 (including more than a fifth of the nation's physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
s) and was the nation's single largest wartime R&D contractor.
In the post-war years, government-sponsored research
Research funding
Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both "hard" science and technology and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most...
such as SAGE
Semi Automatic Ground Environment
The Semi-Automatic Ground Environment was an automated control system for tracking and intercepting enemy bomber aircraft used by NORAD from the late 1950s into the 1980s...
and guidance systems for ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...
s and Project Apollo
Project Apollo
The Apollo program was the spaceflight effort carried out by the United States' National Aeronautics and Space Administration , that landed the first humans on Earth's Moon. Conceived during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Apollo began in earnest after President John F...
, combined with surging student enrollments under the G.I. Bill, contributed to rapid growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant, as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education. The profound changes that occurred at MIT between 1930 and 1957 included the doubling of its faculty and a quintupling of its graduate student population. These changes were significantly guided and shaped by the institution-building strategies of Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton
Karl Taylor Compton was a prominent American physicist and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1930 to 1948.- The early years :...
, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948, James Rhyne Killian
James Rhyne Killian
Dr. James Rhyne Killian, Jr. was the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1948 until 1959.-Career:...
, president from 1948 to 1957, and Julius Adams Stratton
Julius Adams Stratton
Julius Adams Stratton 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 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , from which he graduated with a bachelor's...
, chancellor from 1952 to 1957.
While the school mainly served the needs of industrial patrons in the 1920s, by the 1950s it had gained considerable autonomy from industrial corporations while attracting new patrons and building a close relationship with philanthropic foundations and the federal government. As the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and Space Race
Space Race
The Space Race was a mid-to-late 20th century competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration. Between 1957 and 1975, Cold War rivalry between the two nations focused on attaining firsts in space exploration, which were seen as necessary for national...
intensified and concerns about the technology gap
Sputnik crisis
The Sputnik crisis is the name for the American reaction to the success of the Sputnik program. It was a key event during the Cold War that began on October 4, 1957 when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite....
between the US and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the military-industrial complex
Military-industrial complex
Military–industrial complex , or Military–industrial-congressional complex is a concept commonly used to refer to policy and monetary relationships between legislators, national armed forces, and the industrial sector that supports them...
was a source of pride on campus.
Recent history (1966–present)
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
Presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Wiesner
Jerome Bert Wiesner was an educator, a Science Advisor to U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson, an advocate for arms control, and a critic of anti-ballistic-missile defense systems...
between 1966 and 1980, MIT greatly expanded its programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors, launching competitive graduate programs, and forming into the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The school has 13 departments, department-level programs, and faculties granting the S.B., S.M., and the Ph.D. degrees. The...
and the MIT Sloan School of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts....
in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science
MIT School of Science
The MIT School of Science is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The school is composed of 6 academic departments and grants S.B., S.M., and the Ph.D. or Sc.D degrees. The current Dean of Science is Professor Marc A. Kastner...
and Engineering
MIT School of Engineering
The MIT School of Engineering is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Generally considered having one of the best engineering programs in the world, the school has eight academic departments and one interdisciplinary...
.
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and MIT's defense research
Military funding of science
The military funding of science has had a powerful transformative effect on the practice and products of scientific research since the early 20th century...
. The Union of Concerned Scientists
Union of Concerned Scientists
The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit science advocacy group based in the United States. The UCS membership includes many private citizens in addition to professional scientists. James J...
was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research towards environmental and social problems. Although MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
and moved all classified research off-campus to the Lincoln Laboratory
Lincoln Laboratory
MIT Lincoln Laboratory, located in Lexington, Massachusetts, is a United States Department of Defense research and development center chartered to apply advanced technology to problems of national security. Research and development activities focus on long-term technology development as well as...
facility in 1973 in response to the protests, the student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during the tumultuous era.
In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking
Computer network
A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....
technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at the Project MAC, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
, and Tech Model Railroad Club
Tech Model Railroad Club
The Tech Model Railroad Club is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and one of the most celebrated model railroad clubs in the world, because of its historic role as a wellspring of hacker culture...
wrote some of the earliest interactive computer games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang
Jargon File
The Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s; Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
's GNU Project
GNU Project
The GNU Project is a free software, mass collaboration project, announced on September 27, 1983, by Richard Stallman at MIT. It initiated GNU operating system development in January, 1984...
and the subsequent Free Software Foundation
Free Software Foundation
The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Richard Stallman on 4 October 1985 to support the free software movement, a copyleft-based movement which aims to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software...
were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab, the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association ....
and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology, the World Wide Web Consortium
World Wide Web Consortium
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web .Founded and headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the...
standards organization
Standards organization
A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization , or standards setting organization is any organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are...
was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory...
in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee
Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, , also known as "TimBL", is a British computer scientist, MIT professor and the inventor of the World Wide Web...
, the OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare
MIT OpenCourseWare is an initiative of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to put all of the educational materials from its undergraduate- and graduate-level courses online, partly free and openly available to anyone, anywhere. MIT OpenCourseWare is a large-scale, web-based publication of...
project has made course materials for over 1,800 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. Upon taking office in 2004, President Hockfield launched an Energy Research Council to investigate how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of increasing global energy consumption
World energy resources and consumption
]World energy consumption in 2010: over 5% growthEnergy markets have combined crisis recovery and strong industry dynamism. Energy consumption in the G20 soared by more than 5% in 2010, after the slight decrease of 2009. This strong increase is the result of two converging trends...
.
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 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, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics
Broad Institute
The Broad Institute is a genomic medicine research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although it is independently governed and supported as a 501 nonprofit research organization, the institute is formally affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard...
, biotechnology
Whitehead Institute
Founded in 1982, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research and teaching institution located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA....
, and cancer research, and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center
Stata Center
The Ray and Maria Stata Center or Building 32 is a academic complex designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The building opened for initial occupancy on March 16, 2004...
. Construction on campus has recently concluded an expansion of the Media Lab, the Sloan's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest.
Campus
MIT's 168 acres (68 ha) campus spans approximately a mile of the north side of the Charles RiverCharles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
basin in the city of Cambridge
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, 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
Harvard Bridge
The Harvard Bridge carries Massachusetts Avenue from Back Bay, Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts. It is the longest bridge over the Charles River....
, which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the smoot
Smoot
The smoot is a nonstandard 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 on the Harvard Bridge , and was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the bridge.-Unit...
. The Kendall MBTA Red Line
Red Line (MBTA)
The Red Line is a rapid transit line operated by the MBTA running roughly north-south through Boston, Massachusetts into neighboring communities. The line begins west of Boston, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Alewife station, near the intersection of Alewife Brook Parkway and Route 2...
station is located on the far northeastern edge of the campus in Kendall Square
Kendall Square
Kendall Square is a neighborhood in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with the "square" itself at the intersection of Main Street, Broadway, Wadsworth Street, and Third Street...
. 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.
MIT buildings all have a number (or a number and a letter) 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 are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of underground tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking
Roof and tunnel hacking
Roof and tunnel hacking is the unauthorized exploration of roof and utility tunnel spaces. The term carries a strong collegiate connotation, stemming from its use at MIT, where the practice has a long history. It is a form of urban exploration...
.
MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor
MIT Nuclear Research Reactor
The MIT Nuclear Research Reactor serves the research purposes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a tank-type 6 MW reactor that is moderated and cooled by light water and uses heavy water as a reflector. It is the second largest university based research reactor in the U.S...
is one of the largest university-based nuclear reactor
Nuclear reactor
A nuclear reactor is a device to initiate and control a sustained nuclear chain reaction. Most commonly they are used for generating electricity and for the propulsion of ships. Usually heat from nuclear fission is passed to a working fluid , which runs through turbines that power either ship's...
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. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel
Wind tunnel
A wind tunnel is a research tool used in aerodynamic research to study the effects of air moving past solid objects.-Theory of operation:Wind tunnels were first proposed as a means of studying vehicles in free flight...
and a towing tank
Ship model basin
A ship model basin may be defined as one of two separate yet related entities, namely:* a physical basin or tank used to carry out hydrodynamic tests with ship models, for the purpose of designing a new ship, or refining the design of a ship to improve the ship's performance at sea;* the...
for testing ship and ocean structure designs. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9400000 square feet (873,288.6 m²) of campus.
In 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency
United States Environmental Protection Agency
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the federal government of the United States charged with protecting human health and the environment, by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress...
sued MIT for violating Clean Water Act
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act is the primary federal law in the United States governing water pollution. Commonly abbreviated as the CWA, the act established the goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that...
and Clean Air Act
Clean Air Act
A Clean Air Act is one of a number of pieces of legislation relating to the reduction of airborne contaminants, smog and air pollution in general. The use by governments to enforce clean air standards has contributed to an improvement in human health and longer life spans...
with regard to its hazardous waste
Hazardous waste
A hazardous waste is waste that poses substantial or potential threats to public health or the environment. According to the U.S. environmental laws hazardous wastes fall into two major categories: characteristic wastes and listed wastes.Characteristic hazardous wastes are materials that are known...
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
Alternative fuel
Alternative fuels, known as non-conventional or advanced fuels, are any materials or substances that can be used as fuels, other than conventional fuels...
campus shuttles, subsidizing public transportation passes
CharlieCard
The CharlieCard is a MIFARE-based, contactless, stored value smart card used for electronic ticketing as part of the Automated Fare Collection system installed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority at its stations and on its vehicles...
, and building a low-emission cogeneration
Cogeneration
Cogeneration is the use of a heat engine or a power station to simultaneously generate both electricity and useful heat....
plant that serves most of the campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements.
Between 2006 and 2008, MIT reported 16 forcible sex offenses, 4 robberies, 13 aggravated assaults, 536 burglaries, 2 cases of arson, and 16 cases of motor vehicle theft.
Architecture
MIT School of Architecture and Planning
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
, now the School of Architecture and Planning, was the first 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 known officially as the Maclaurin buildings after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth, these imposing buildings were built of concrete, a first for a non-industrial — much less university — building in the US. The utopian City Beautiful movement
City Beautiful movement
The City Beautiful Movement was a reform philosophy concerning North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of using beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago,...
greatly influenced Bosworth's design, which features the Pantheon
Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
-esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where annual Commencement (graduation) exercises are held. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with the names of important scientists and philosophers. The imposing Building 7 atrium along Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor
Infinite Corridor
The Infinite Corridor is the hallway, 251 metres long, that runs through the main buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specifically parts of the buildings numbered 7, 3, 10, 4, and 8...
and the rest of the campus.
Alvar Aalto
Alvar Aalto
Hugo Alvar Henrik Aalto was a Finnish architect and designer. His work includes architecture, furniture, textiles and glassware...
's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer of the 20th century famous for varying his style according to the demands of the project: simple, sweeping, arching structural curves or machine-like rationalism.-Biography:Eero Saarinen shared the same birthday as his father,...
's Chapel and Auditorium (1955), and I.M. Pei's Green, Dreyfus, Landau, and Wiesner buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture. More recent buildings like Frank Gehry
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry, is a Canadian American Pritzker Prize-winning architect based in Los Angeles, California.His buildings, including his private residence, have become tourist attractions...
's Stata Center
Stata Center
The Ray and Maria Stata Center or Building 32 is a academic complex designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The building opened for initial occupancy on March 16, 2004...
(2004), Steven Holl
Steven Holl
Steven Holl is an American architect and watercolorist, perhaps best known for the 1998 Kiasma Contemporary Art Museum in Helsinki, Finland, the 2003 Simmons Hall at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the celebrated 2007 Bloch Building addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City,...
's Simmons Hall (2002), Charles Correa
Charles Correa
Charles Correa is an Indian architect, planner and activist.-Early life:Charles Correa was born in Hyderabad, India...
's Building 46 (2005), Fumihiko Maki
Fumihiko Maki
is a Japanese architect and currently teaching at Keio University SFC.- Biography :After studying at the University of Tokyo he moved to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and then to Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 1956, he took a post as assistant professor of...
's Media Lab Extension (2009) are distinctive amongst the Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus "starchitecture." These buildings have not always been popularly acclaimed; in 2010, The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review
The Princeton Review is an American-based standardized test preparation and admissions consulting company. The Princeton Review operates in 41 states and 22 countries across the globe. It offers test preparation for standardized aptitude tests such as the SAT and advice regarding college...
included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both."
Housing
Counterculture
Counterculture is a sociological term used to describe the values and norms of behavior of a cultural group, or subculture, that run counter to those of the social mainstream of the day, the cultural equivalent of political opposition. Counterculture can also be described as a group whose behavior...
activities. MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families.
MIT has a very active Greek and co-op system which includes 36 fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups (FSILGs). 50% of male undergraduates join a fraternity and 34% of women join sororities. Most FSILGs are located across the river in the Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there, but eight fraternities are located on MIT's West Campus and in Cambridge. After the 1997 death of Scott Krueger, a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Gamma Delta
The international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta is a collegiate social fraternity with 120 chapters and 18 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and its headquarters are located in Lexington, Kentucky, USA...
fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in the dormitory system starting in 2002. Because the fraternities and independent living groups had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy did not take effect until 2002 after Simmons Hall opened.
Organization and administration
Governor of Massachusetts
The Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the executive magistrate of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. The current governor is Democrat Deval Patrick.-Constitutional role:...
, the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, and the Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The SJC has the distinction of being the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in the Western Hemisphere.-History:...
. The board is chaired by John S. Reed
John S. Reed
John Shepard Reed is the former Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. He previously served as Chairman and CEO of Citicorp, Citibank, and post-merger, Citigroup. He is currently the Chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Office of Corporation. He was born in Chicago, Illinois,...
, the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
and Citigroup
Citigroup
Citigroup Inc. or Citi is an American multinational financial services corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States. Citigroup was formed from one of the world's largest mergers in history by combining the banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomerate...
. The corporation approves the budget, new programs, degrees, and faculty appointments as well as electing the President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and presiding over the Institute's faculty. The sixteenth and current president, Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield is the sixteenth and current president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hockfield's appointment was publicly announced on August 26, 2004, and she formally took office December 6, 2004, succeeding Charles M. Vest. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took...
, a molecular neurobiologist, succeeded Charles M. Vest's fourteen year tenure in December 2004 and is the first woman to hold the post. MIT's endowment
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
and other financial assets
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...
are managed through a subsidiary MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo). Valued at $8.0 billion in 2009, MIT's endowment is the sixth-largest among American colleges and universities.
MIT is "a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts." It has five schools (Science
MIT School of Science
The MIT School of Science is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The school is composed of 6 academic departments and grants S.B., S.M., and the Ph.D. or Sc.D degrees. The current Dean of Science is Professor Marc A. Kastner...
, Engineering
MIT School of Engineering
The MIT School of Engineering is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Generally considered having one of the best engineering programs in the world, the school has eight academic departments and one interdisciplinary...
, Architecture and Planning
MIT School of Architecture and Planning
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
, Management
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts....
, and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
The MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. The school has 13 departments, department-level programs, and faculties granting the S.B., S.M., and the Ph.D. degrees. The...
) and one college (Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology), but no schools of law or medicine. 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. However, faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs.
Collaborations
Alfred P. Sloan
Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr. was an American business executive in the automotive industry. He was a long-time president, chairman, and CEO of General Motors Corporation...
and Thomas Alva Edison led President Compton to establish an Office of Corporate Relations and an Industrial Liaison Program in the 1930s and 1940s that now allows over 600 companies to license research
Technology transfer
Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...
and consult with MIT faculty and researchers. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, American politicians and business leaders accused MIT and other universities of contributing to a declining economy
Late 1980s recession
The recession of the early 1990s describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the world in the late 1980s and early 1990s.-Causes:...
by transferring
Technology transfer
Technology Transfer, also called Transfer of Technology and Technology Commercialisation, is the process of skill transferring, knowledge, technologies, methods of manufacturing, samples of manufacturing and facilities among governments or universities and other institutions to ensure that...
taxpayer-funded research and technology to international — especially Japanese
Economy of Japan
The economy of Japan, a free market economy, is the third largest in the world after the United States and the People's Republic of China, and ahead of Germany at 4th...
— firms that were competing with struggling American businesses.
MIT's extensive collaboration with the federal government on research projects has also led to several MIT leaders serving as Presidential scientific advisers
President's Science Advisory Committee
In 1951 President of the United States Harry S. Truman established the Science Advisory Committee as part of the Office of Defense Mobilization . As a direct response to the launches of the Soviet artificial satellites, Sputnik 1 and Sputnik 2, on October 4 and November 3, 1957, the Science...
since 1940. MIT established a Washington Office in 1991 to continue to lobby
Lobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...
for research funding and national science policy
Science policy
Science policy is an area of public policy concerned with the policies that affect the conduct of the science and research enterprise, including the funding of science, often in pursuance of other national policy goals such as technological innovation to promote commercial product development,...
. In response to MIT, eight Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
colleges, and 11 other institutions holding "Overlap Meetings" to prevent bidding wars over promising students from consuming funds for need-based scholarships, the Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
began an antitrust investigation in 1989 and in 1991 filed an antitrust suit
Sherman Antitrust Act
The Sherman Antitrust Act requires the United States federal government to investigate and pursue trusts, companies, and organizations suspected of violating the Act. It was the first Federal statute to limit cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most antitrust litigation by...
against these universities. While the Ivy League institutions settled
Consent decree
A consent decree is a final, binding judicial decree or judgment memorializing a voluntary agreement between parties to a suit in return for withdrawal of a criminal charge or an end to a civil litigation...
, MIT contested the charges on the grounds 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.
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
has created both a quasi-friendly rivalry ("the other school up the river
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
") and a substantial number of research collaborations such as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology
Founded in 1970, the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, or HST, is one of the oldest and largest biomedical engineering and physician-scientist training programs in the United States and the longest-standing functional collaboration between Harvard University and the...
and Broad Institute
Broad Institute
The Broad Institute is a genomic medicine research center located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Although it is independently governed and supported as a 501 nonprofit research organization, the institute is formally affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard...
. In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register
Cross-registration
Cross-registration in United States higher education is a system allowing students at one university, college, or faculty within a university to take individual courses for credit at another institution or faculty, typically in the same region....
for credits toward their own school's degrees without any additional fees. A cross-registration program with Wellesley College has existed since 1969 and a significant undergraduate exchange program with the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
known as the Cambridge-MIT Institute
Cambridge-MIT Institute
The Cambridge–MIT Institute, or CMI, is a partnership between the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts....
was also launched in 2002. MIT has more modest cross-registration programs with Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, Tufts University
Tufts University
Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...
, Massachusetts College of Art
Massachusetts College of Art
Massachusetts College of Art and Design is a publicly-funded college of visual and applied art, founded in 1873. It is one of the oldest art schools, the only publicly-funded free-standing art school in the United States, and was the first art college in the United States to grant an artistic degree...
, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is an undergraduate and graduate college located in Boston, Massachusetts, dedicated to the visual arts. It is affiliated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in partnership with Tufts University...
. MIT maintains substantial research and faculty ties with independent research organizations in the Boston-area like the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Charles Stark Draper Laboratory
Draper Laboratory is an American not-for-profit research and development organization in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Draper focuses on the design, development, and deployment of advanced technology solutions to problems in national security, space exploration, health care and energy.Originally...
, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
Whitehead Institute
Founded in 1982, the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research is a non-profit research and teaching institution located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA....
, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, nonprofit research and higher education facility dedicated to the study of all aspects of marine science and engineering and to the education of marine researchers. Established in 1930, it is the largest independent oceanographic research...
as well as international research and educational collaborations through the Singapore-MIT Alliance
Singapore-MIT alliance
Singapore-MIT Alliance was founded in 1998 as an initiative to develop research talents who can contribute locally to the economy. Born out of a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University, it...
, MIT-Politecnico di Milano, MIT-Zaragoza
University of Zaragoza
The University of Zaragoza or sometimes Saragossa University is a university located in Zaragoza, in the Aragon region of Spain...
International Logistics Program, and other countries through the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program.
The mass-market magazine Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
is published by MIT through a subsidiary company, as is a special edition that also serves as the Institute's official alumni magazine. The MIT Press
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts .-History:...
is a major university press, publishing over 200 books and 40 journals annually emphasizing science and technology as well as arts, architecture, new media, current events, and social issues.
Academics
MIT is a large, highly residential, research university with a majority of enrollments in graduate and professional programs. The university has been accreditedEducational accreditation
Educational accreditation is a type of quality assurance process under which services and operations of educational institutions or programs are evaluated by an external body to determine if applicable standards are met...
by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges
New England Association of Schools and Colleges
The New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc. is the U.S. regional accreditation association providing educational accreditation for all levels of education, from pre-kindergarten to the doctoral level, in the six-state New England region. It also provides accreditation for some...
since 1929. MIT operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall semester beginning after Labor Day and ending in mid-December, a 4-week "Independent Activities Period" in the month of January, and the spring semester beginning in early February and ending in late May.
The School of Engineering has been ranked first among graduate and undergraduate programs by U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report
U.S. News & World Report is an American news magazine published from Washington, D.C. Along with Time and Newsweek it was for many years a leading news weekly, focusing more than its counterparts on political, economic, health and education stories...
since the first published results in 1994. MIT has also consistently ranked first in the Academic Ranking of World Universities
Academic Ranking of World Universities
The Academic Ranking of World Universities , commonly known as the Shanghai ranking, is a publication that was founded and compiled by the Shanghai Jiaotong University to rank universities globally. The rankings have been conducted since 2003 and updated annually...
in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences. A 1995 National Research Council
United States National Research Council
The National Research Council of the USA is the working arm of the United States National Academies, carrying out most of the studies done in their names.The National Academies include:* National Academy of Sciences...
study of US research universities ranked MIT first in "reputation" and fourth in "citations and faculty awards" and a 2005 NBER
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." The NBER is well known for providing start and end...
study of high school students' revealed preference
Revealed preference
Revealed preference theory, pioneered by American economist Paul Samuelson, is a method by which it is possible to discern the best possible option on the basis of consumer behavior. Essentially, this means that the preferences of consumers can be revealed by their purchasing habits...
s found MIT to be the 4th most preferred college in the nation.
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 their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course I, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII. Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, the most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course VI." MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; the introductory calculus-based classical mechanics
Classical mechanics
In physics, classical mechanics is one of the two major sub-fields of mechanics, which is concerned with the set of physical laws describing the motion of bodies under the action of a system of forces...
course is simply "8.01" at MIT.
Undergraduate program
The four year, full-time undergraduate instructional program is classified as "balanced arts & sciences/professions" and admission is characterized as "more selective, lower transfer in." MIT offers 44 undergraduate degrees across its five schools. In 2009, some 1,146 bachelor of scienceBachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
(abbreviated as SB, from the Latin expression Scientiæ Baccalaureus) degrees were granted, the only type of undergraduate degree MIT now awards. The School of Engineering is the most popular division, enrolling 44.5% of students in its 19 degree programs, followed by the School of Science (20.2%), School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (3.5%), Sloan School of Management (3.5%), and the School of Architecture and Planning (1.8%). The largest undergraduate degree programs are in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Course VI-2), Mechanical Engineering (Course II), Computer Science and Engineering (Course VI-3), Physics (Course VIII), Biology (Course VII), and Mathematics (Course XVIII).
Undergraduates are required to complete an extensive 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, one semester of biology, and a laboratory class in their major. The humanities, arts, and social sciences (HASS) requirement, consisting of eight semesters, includes a distribution of three classes across each of the humanities, arts, and social sciences as well as a concentration. The communication requirement consists of two communication-intensive HASS classes and two classes in their major program. Finally, all students are required to complete a swimming test and non-varsity athletes must also take four physical education
Physical education
Physical education or gymnastics is a course taken during primary and secondary education that encourages psychomotor learning in a play or movement exploration setting....
classes.
Most classes rely upon a combination of faculty led lectures, graduate student led recitations, weekly problem sets (p-sets), and tests to teach material, though alternative curricula exist, e.g. Experimental Study Group
Experimental Study Group
The Experimental Study Group describes itself as an "alternative academic program" 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 group setting at MIT...
, Concourse
Concourse Program at MIT
The Concourse Program is a freshman learning community at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Concourse admits up to fifty select MIT freshmen a year who are interested in understanding the breadth of human knowledge and the larger context of their science and engineering studies...
, and Terrascope. In recent years, there has been a trend towards "unified" mainstream introductory courses (e.g. in the Physics and the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments), incorporating a coordinated curriculum of theory and hands-on laboratory experiences.
In the past, some organized student groups have compiled "course bibles", collections of problem set and examination questions and answers used as references for later students. In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum
The Hidden Curriculum
The Hidden Curriculum is a book by Benson R. Snyder, the then-Dean of Institute Relations at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Snyder advocates the thesis that much of campus conflict and students' personal anxiety is caused by a mass of unstated academic and social norms, which thwart...
, arguing that unwritten regulations, like the implicit curricula of the bibles, are often counterproductive; they fool professors into believing that their teaching is effective and students into believing they have learned the material. For further coverage of this topic, see History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology#Course "Bibles".
In 1969, MIT began the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) to enable undergraduates to collaborate directly with faculty members and researchers. The program, founded by Margaret MacVicar
Margaret MacVicar
Margaret L.A. MacVicar was an American physicist and educator. In addition to serving as MIT's Dean of Undergraduate Education , MacVicar is credited with founding the now widely emulated Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 1969...
, builds upon the MIT philosophy of "learning by doing". Students join or initiate research projects, colloquially called "UROPs", through postings on the UROP website or by contacting faculty members directly. Over 2,800 undergraduates, 70% of the student body, participate every year for academic credit, pay, or on a volunteer basis. Students often become published
Scientific journal
In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, and many more have been published at various points in the past...
, file patent application
Patent application
A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for the invention described and claimed by that application. An application consists of a description of the invention , together with official forms and correspondence relating to the application...
s, and/or launch start-up companies
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
based upon their experience in UROPs.
Graduate program
MIT's graduate program is a comprehensive doctoral program having high coexistence with undergraduate programs in the humanities, social sciences, and STEMSTEM
STEM can refer to*STEM fields – an acronym for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics*Scanning transmission electron microscopy...
fields as well as offering professional degrees. The Institute offers graduate programs leading to academic degrees such as the Master of Science (SM), various Engineer's Degrees, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), and Doctor of Science (ScD); professional degrees such as Master of Architecture (MArch), Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of City Planning (MCP), Master of Engineering (MEng), and Master of Finance (MFin); and interdisciplinary graduate programs such as the MD/PhD
MD/PhD
MD/PhD refers to an education which includes both the medical training of a physician with the rigor of a scientific researcher . It can refer to the designation given to a person who has graduated from such an education, or an educational program which incorporates both curricula.-Profession:An...
(with Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School
Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
). Admission to graduate programs is decentralized; applicants apply directly to the department or degree program. Doctoral students are supported by fellowships (30%), research assistantships (49%), and teaching assistantships (13%).
MIT awarded 1,474 master's degrees and 607 doctoral degrees in 2009. The School of Engineering is the most popular academic division enrolling 45.4% of graduate students, followed by the Sloan School of Management (17.3%), School of Science (17.3%), School of Architecture and Planning (9.5%), School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (4.9%), and Whitaker College of Health Sciences (2.5%). The largest graduate degree programs are the Sloan MBA, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Chemical Engineering.
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 2.8 million printed volumes, 2.2 million microforms, 43,000 print or electronic journal subscriptions, and 570 databases. Notable collections include the Lewis Music Library with an emphasis on 20th and 21st-century music and electronic music, the List Visual Arts Center'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 MuseumMIT Museum
MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is the museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, artificial intelligence, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT. Its holography collection of 1800 pieces is the largest in...
was founded in 1971 and collects, preserves, and exhibits artifacts significant to the life and history of MIT as well as collaborating with the nearby Museum of Science.
Research
MIT was elected to the Association of American UniversitiesAssociation of American Universities
The Association of American Universities is an organization of leading research universities devoted to maintaining a strong system of academic research and education...
in 1934 and remains a research university with a very high level of research activity; research expenditures totaled $718.2 million in 2009. The federal government was the largest source of sponsored research, with the Department of Health and Human Services granting $255.9 million, Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
$97.5 million, Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
$65.8 million, National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
$61.4 million, and NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
$27.4 million. MIT employs approximately 1300 researchers in addition to faculty. In 2009, MIT faculty and researchers disclosed 530 inventions, filed 184 patent applications, received 166 patents, and earned $136.3 million in royalties and other income.
Magnetic core memory
Magnetic-core memory was the predominant form of random-access computer memory for 20 years . It uses tiny magnetic toroids , the cores, through which wires are threaded to write and read information. Each core represents one bit of information...
, radar
Radar
Radar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
, single electron transistors, and inertial guidance controls were invented or substantially developed by MIT researchers. Harold Eugene Edgerton
Harold Eugene Edgerton
Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton was a professor of electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
was a pioneer in high speed photography
High speed photography
High speed photography is the science of taking pictures of very fast phenomena. In 1948, the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers defined high-speed photography as any set of photographs captured by a camera capable of 128 frames per second or greater, and of at least three...
. Claude E. Shannon developed much of modern information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
and discovered the application of Boolean logic
Boolean logic
Boolean algebra is a logical calculus of truth values, developed by George Boole in the 1840s. It resembles the algebra of real numbers, but with the numeric operations of multiplication xy, addition x + y, and negation −x replaced by the respective logical operations of...
to digital circuit
Digital circuit
Digital electronics represent signals by discrete bands of analog levels, rather than by a continuous range. All levels within a band represent the same signal state...
design theory. In the domain of computer science, MIT faculty and researchers made fundamental contributions to cybernetics
Norbert Wiener
Norbert Wiener was an American mathematician.A famous child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.Wiener is regarded as the originator of cybernetics, a...
, artificial intelligence
Marvin Minsky
Marvin Lee Minsky is an American cognitive scientist in the field of artificial intelligence , co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory, and author of several texts on AI and philosophy.-Biography:...
, computer languages
Joseph Weizenbaum
Joseph Weizenbaum was a German-American author and professor emeritus of computer science at MIT.-Life and career:...
, machine learning
Patrick Winston
Patrick Henry Winston is an American computer scientist, and is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Winston was director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1972 to 1997, succeeding Marvin Minsky, who left to found the MIT Media Lab and succeeded by Rodney Brooks...
, robotics
Rodney Brooks
Rodney Allen Brooks is the former Panasonic professor of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1986 he has authored a series of highly influential papers which have inaugurated a fundamental shift in artificial intelligence research...
, and cryptography. At least nine Turing Award
Turing Award
The Turing Award, in full The ACM A.M. Turing Award, is an annual award given by the Association for Computing Machinery to "an individual selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. The contributions should be of lasting and major technical importance to the...
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 Prizes
Nobel Prize in Physics
The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded once a year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895 and awarded since 1901; the others are the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Peace Prize, and...
, four 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 Prizes
Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to scientists in the various fields of chemistry. It is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Alfred Nobel in 1895, awarded for outstanding contributions in chemistry, physics, literature,...
and one Wolf Prize for the discovery of novel syntheses and methods. MIT biologists have been awarded six Nobel Prizes for their contributions to genetics, immunology, oncology, and molecular biology. Professor Eric Lander
Eric Lander
Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...
was one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...
. Positronium
Positronium
Positronium is a system consisting of an electron and its anti-particle, a positron, bound together into an "exotic atom". Being unstable, the two particles annihilate each other to produce two gamma ray photons after an average lifetime of 125 ps or three gamma ray photons after 142 ns in...
atoms, synthetic penicillin
Penicillin
Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....
, synthetic self-replicating molecules
Julius Rebek
Julius Rebek, Jr. is a Hungarian-born American chemist and expert on molecular self-assembly.Rebek was born in Beregszasz , Hungary in 1944 and lived in Austria from 1945 to 1949. In 1949 he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Kansas. Rebek graduated from the University...
, and the genetic bases for Lou Gehrig's disease and Huntington's disease
Huntington's disease
Huntington's disease, chorea, or disorder , is a neurodegenerative genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and leads to cognitive decline and dementia. It typically becomes noticeable in middle age. HD is the most common genetic cause of abnormal involuntary writhing movements called chorea...
were first discovered at MIT. Jerome Lettvin
Jerome Lettvin
Jerome Ysroael Lettvin was a cognitive scientist and professor Emeritus of Electrical and Bioengineering and Communications Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is best known as the author of the 1959 paper, "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain", one of the most...
transformed the study of cognitive science with his paper "What the frog's eye tells the frog's brain".
In the domain of humanities, arts, and social sciences, MIT economists have been awarded five Nobel Prizes and nine John Bates Clark Medal
John Bates Clark Medal
The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge"...
s. Linguists Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
and Morris Halle
Morris Halle
Morris Halle , is a Latvian-American Jewish linguist and an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
authored seminal texts on generative grammar
Generative grammar
In theoretical linguistics, generative grammar refers to a particular approach to the study of syntax. A generative grammar of a language attempts to give a set of rules that will correctly predict which combinations of words will form grammatical sentences...
and phonology
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
. The MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
, founded in 1985 within the School of Architecture and Planning
MIT School of Architecture and Planning
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
and known for its unconventional research, has been home to influential researchers such as constructivist
Constructivism (learning theory)
Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. During infancy, it was an interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of...
educator and Logo
Logo (programming language)
Logo is a multi-paradigm computer programming language used in education. It is an adaptation and dialect of the Lisp language; some have called it Lisp without the parentheses. It was originally conceived and written as functional programming language, and drove a mechanical turtle as an output...
creator Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert
Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
.
Spanning many of the above fields, MacArthur Fellowships (the so-called "Genius Grants") have been awarded to 38 people associated with MIT. Four Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
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.
Given MIT's prominence, allegations of research misconduct or improprieties have received substantial press coverage. Professor David Baltimore
David Baltimore
David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech...
, a 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
Whitewash (censorship)
To whitewash is a metaphor meaning to gloss over or cover up vices, crimes or scandals or to exonerate by means of a perfunctory investigation or through biased presentation of data. It is especially used in the context of corporations, governments or other organizations.- Etymology :Its first...
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
Luk Van Parijs
Luk Van Parijs was an associate professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Cancer Research. After investigating for a year, MIT fired Van Parijs for research misconduct. In a press release, MIT claimed Van Parijs admitted to fabricating and falsifying research...
was dismissed in 2005 following allegations of scientific misconduct and found guilty of the same by the United States Office of Research Integrity
United States Office of Research Integrity
The Office of Research Integrity is one of the bodies concerned with research integrity in the United States. It was created when the Office of Scientific Integrity in the National Institutes of Health and the Office of Scientific Integrity Review in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for...
in 2009.
Traditions and student activities
The faculty and student body highly value meritocracyMeritocracy
Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...
and technical proficiency. MIT has never awarded an honorary degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
, nor does it award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degree
Ad eundem degree
An ad eundem degree is a courtesy degree awarded by one university or college to an alumnus of another. The recipient of the ad eundem degree is often a faculty member at the institution where he or she is receiving the honor....
s, or Latin honors
Latin honors
Latin honors are Latin phrases used to indicate the level of academic distinction with which an academic degree was earned. This system is primarily used in the United States, Canada, and in many countries of continental Europe, though some institutions also use the English translation of these...
upon graduation. However, MIT has twice awarded honorary professorships; to Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.
Many upperclass students and alumni wear a large, heavy, distinctive class ring
Class ring
A class ring is a ring worn by students and alumni in the United States and Canada to commemorate their graduation, generally for a high school, college, or university.-History:...
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 beaver
American Beaver
The North American Beaver is the only species of beaver in the Americas, native to North America and introduced to South America. In the United States and Canada, where no other species of beaver occurs, it is usually simply referred to as "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," "It's Hard to Fondle Penguins," and other variations, has occasionally been featured on the ring given its historical prominence in student culture.
Activities
MIT has over 380 recognized student activity groups, including a campus radio stationWMBR
WMBR is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology student-run college radio station, licensed to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and broadcasting on 88.1 FM. It is all-volunteer and funded by listener donations and MIT funds...
, The Tech student newspaper, an annual entrepreneurship competition
MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition
The is one of the largest and most famous business plan competitions in the world. Entirely student-managed, students from all programs and levels at MIT organize and enter the $100K. Teams must include at least 1 full-time MIT student, but membership is not restricted to the MIT community...
, and weekly screenings of popular films by the Lecture Series Committee. Less traditional activities include the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction
MIT Science Fiction Society
The MIT Science Fiction Society is a literary society and library of science fiction and fantasy books and magazines, located at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
" in English, a model railroad club, and a vibrant folk dance
Tech Squares
Tech Squares is a square and round dance club at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1967 and is still holding dances today. Tech Squares dances high-energy modern Western squares in an "all position" style, with no dress code or couples requirement. It has a large...
scene. Students, faculty, and staff are involved in over 50 educational outreach and public service programs through the MIT Museum
MIT Museum
MIT Museum, founded in 1971, is the museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It hosts collections of holography, artificial intelligence, robotics, maritime history, and the history of MIT. Its holography collection of 1800 pieces is the largest in...
, Edgerton Center, and MIT Public Service Center.
The 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 the 6.270, 6.370, and MasLab competitions, the annual "mystery hunt"
MIT Mystery Hunt
The MIT Mystery Hunt is an annual puzzlehunt competition at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As one of the oldest and most complex puzzlehunts in the world, it attracts about 1,000 people annually and has inspired similar competitions at Microsoft, Stanford University, Melbourne...
, and Charm School. Students also have the opportunity of pursuing externships at companies in the US and abroad.
Many MIT students also engage in "hacking," which encompasses both the physical exploration of areas
Roof and tunnel hacking
Roof and tunnel hacking is the unauthorized exploration of roof and utility tunnel spaces. The term carries a strong collegiate connotation, stemming from its use at MIT, where the practice has a long history. It is a form of urban exploration...
that are generally off-limits (such as rooftops and steam tunnels), as well as elaborate practical jokes
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics. The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively...
. Recent high-profile hacks have included the theft of Caltech's
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...
cannon, reconstructing a Wright Flyer
Wright Flyer
The Wright Flyer was the first powered aircraft, designed and built by the Wright brothers. They flew it four times on December 17, 1903 near the Kill Devil Hills, about four miles south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, U.S.The U.S...
atop the Great Dome, and adorning the John Harvard
John Harvard (clergyman)
John Harvard was an English minister in America whose deathbed bequest to the Massachusetts Bay Colony's fledgling New College was so gratefully received that the school was renamed Harvard College in his honor.-Biography:Harvard was born and raised in Southwark, England, the fourth of nine...
statue with the Master Chief's Spartan Helmet
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
.
Athletics
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference
The New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference is an intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA’s Division III...
, the New England Football Conference
New England Football Conference
The New England Football Conference is an athletic conference which competes in football in the NCAA's Division III. Member teams are located in New England...
, the Pilgrim League
Pilgrim League
The Pilgrim Lacrosse League is an NCAA Division III men's college lacrosse conference that has member schools in Massachusetts.-Members:The member schools are:* Babson College* Clark University* Massachusetts Institute of Technology...
for men's lacrosse and NCAA's
National Collegiate Athletic Association
The National Collegiate Athletic Association is a semi-voluntary association of 1,281 institutions, conferences, organizations and individuals that organizes the athletic programs of many colleges and universities in the United States...
Division I Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) for crew. In April 2009, budget cuts lead 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.
The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot
Mascot
The term mascot – defined as a term for any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck – colloquially includes anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name...
since 1914 being a beaver
American Beaver
The North American Beaver is the only species of beaver in the Americas, native to North America and introduced to South America. In the United States and Canada, where no other species of beaver occurs, it is usually simply referred to as "beaver"...
, "nature's engineer." Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification:
Tiddlywinks
Tiddlywinks is an indoor game played on a flat mat with sets of small discs called "winks", a pot and a collection of squidgers. Players use a "squidger", a disk usually made from plastic to move a wink into flight by pressing down on one side of the wink...
teams through 1980, winning national and world championships. The Engineers have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, taekwondo, track and field, swimming and diving, cross country, crew, fencing, and water polo. MIT has produced 128 Academic All-Americans
All-America
An All-America team is an honorary sports team composed of outstanding amateur players—those considered the best players of a specific season for each team position—who in turn are given the honorific "All-America" and typically referred to as "All-American athletes", or simply...
, the third largest membership in the country for any division and the highest number of members for Division III.
The Zesiger sports and fitness center
Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center
The Al and Barrie Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center is the central athletics facility at MIT since 2002. It is connected to Rockwell Cage, du Pont Gymnasium and the Johnson Athletic Center. MIT's Department of Athletics, Physical Education and Recreation administrative offices are also housed in...
(Z-Center) which opened in 2002, significantly expanded the capacity and quality of MIT's athletics, physical education, and recreation offerings to 10 buildings and 26 acres (105,218.4 m²) of playing fields. The 124000 square feet (11,520 m²) facility features an Olympic-class swimming pool, international-scale squash courts, and a two-story fitness center.
Students
| Undergraduate | Graduate | |
|---|---|---|
| Caucasian American | 42.5% | 40.8% |
| Asian American Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,... |
25.6% | 9.4% |
| Hispanic American | 13.2% | 3.3% |
| African American African American African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States... |
8.5% | 2.1% |
| Native American Native Americans in the United States Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as... |
1.0% | 0.4% |
| Other/International International student According to Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development , international students are those who travel to a country different from their own for the purpose of tertiary study. Despite that, the definition of international students varies in each country in accordance to their own national... |
9.2% | 44.0% |
MIT enrolled 4,232 undergraduates and 6,152 graduate students in 2009–2010. Women constituted 45.3 percent of undergraduates and 31.1 percent of graduate students. Undergraduate and graduate students are drawn from all 50 states as well as 118 foreign countries.
MIT received 15,661 applications for admission to the Class of 2014; 1675 were admitted (10.7 percent) and 1078 enrolled (63.9 percent). 19,446 applications were received for advanced degree program across all departments; 2,991 were admitted (15.4 percent) and 1,880 enrolled (62.8 percent). The interquartile range
Interquartile range
In descriptive statistics, the interquartile range , also called the midspread or middle fifty, is a measure of statistical dispersion, being equal to the difference between the upper and lower quartiles...
on the SAT was 2030–2320 and 95 percent of students ranked in the top tenth of their high school graduating class. 97 percent of the Class of 2012 returned as sophomores; 82.3 percent of the Class of 2007 graduated within 4 years, and 91.3 percent (92 percent of the men and 96 percent of the women) graduated within 6 years.
Undergraduate tuition and fees total $37,782 and annual expenses are estimated at $50,100. 61 percent of students received need-based financial aid in the form of scholarships and grants from federal, state, institutional, and external sources averaging $35,202 per student. MIT awarded $87.6 million in scholarships and grants, the vast majority ($73.4 million) coming from institutional support. The annual increase in expenses has led to a student tradition (dating back to the 1960s) of tongue-in-cheek "tuition riots".
MIT has been nominally coeducation
Coeducation
Mixed-sex education, also known as coeducation or co-education, is the integrated education of male and female persons in the same institution. It is the opposite of single-sex education...
al since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Swallow Richards
Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards was the foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 19th century, pioneering the field of home economics. Richards graduated from Westford Academy...
in 1870. Richards also became the first female member of MIT's faculty, specializing in sanitary chemistry
Environmental health
Environmental health is the branch of public health that is concerned with all aspects of the natural and built environment that may affect human health...
. Female students remained a very small minority (less than 3 percent) prior to the completion of the first wing of a women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1962. 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 currently outnumber men in Biology, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Architecture, Urban Planning, and Biological Engineering.
A number of student deaths in the late 1990s and early 2000s resulted in considerable media attention to MIT's culture and student life. After the alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger in September 1997 as a new member at the Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Gamma Delta
The international fraternity of Phi Gamma Delta is a collegiate social fraternity with 120 chapters and 18 colonies across the United States and Canada. It was founded at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, in 1848, and its headquarters are located in Lexington, Kentucky, USA...
fraternity, MIT began requiring all freshmen to live in the dormitory system. The 2000 suicide of MIT undergraduate Elizabeth Shin
Elizabeth Shin
Elizabeth Shin was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who died from burns inflicted by a fire in her dormitory room. Her death led to a lawsuit against MIT and controversy as to whether MIT paid adequate attention to its students' mental and emotional health, and whether MIT's...
drew attention to suicides at MIT and created a controversy over whether MIT had an unusually high suicide rate. In late 2001 a task force's recommended improvements in student mental health
Mental health
Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...
services were implemented, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center. These and later cases were significant as well because they sought to prove the negligence and liability of university administrators in loco parentis
In loco parentis
The term in loco parentis, Latin for "in the place of a parent"" refers to the legal responsibility of a person or organization to take on some of the functions and responsibilities of a parent...
.
Faculty
Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation
This list of Nobel laureates by university affiliation shows the university affiliation of winners of the Nobel Prize...
past or present have won a total of 27 Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s, the majority in Economics or Physics. Among current faculty and teaching staff, there are 80 Guggenheim Fellows, 6 Fulbright Scholars, and 29 MacArthur Fellows. Faculty members who have made extraordinary contributions to their research field as well as the MIT community are granted appointments as Institute Professor
Institute Professor
Institute Professor is the highest title that can be awarded to a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States...
s for the remainder of their tenures.
A 1998 MIT study concluded that a systemic bias against female faculty existed in its college of science, although the study's methods were controversial. Since the study, though, women have headed departments within the Schools of Science and Engineering, and MIT has appointed several female vice presidents, although allegations of sexism continue to be made. Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield
Susan Hockfield is the sixteenth and current president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hockfield's appointment was publicly announced on August 26, 2004, and she formally took office December 6, 2004, succeeding Charles M. Vest. Hockfield's official inauguration celebrations took...
, a molecular neurobiologist, became MIT's 16th president in 2004 and is the first woman to hold the post.
Tenure outcomes have vaulted MIT into the national spotlight on several occasions. The 1984 dismissal of David F. Noble
David F. Noble
David Franklin Noble was a critical historian of technology, science and education, best known for his seminal work on the social history of automation. In his final years he taught in the Division of Social Science, and the department of Social and Political Thought. at York University in...
, a historian of technology, became a cause célèbre
Cause célèbre
A is an issue or incident arousing widespread controversy, outside campaigning and heated public debate. The term is particularly used in connection with celebrated legal cases. It is a French phrase in common English use...
about the extent to which academics are granted freedom of speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...
after he published several books and papers critical of MIT's and other research universities' reliance upon financial support from corporations and the military. Former materials science professor Gretchen Kalonji sued MIT in 1994 alleging that she was denied tenure because of sexual discrimination. In 1997, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination is the primary agency for civil rights law enforcement, outreach, and training in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
issued a probable cause finding supporting James Jennings' allegations of racial discrimination after a senior faculty search committee in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning did not offer him reciprocal tenure. In 2006–2007, MIT's denial of tenure to African-American biological engineering professor James Sherley
James Sherley
James Sherley is a biological engineer at Boston Biomedical Research Institute.Sherley's education includes a B.S. from Harvard University and an M.D and a Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Arnold J...
reignited accusations of racism in the tenure process, eventually leading to a protracted public dispute with the administration, a brief hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
, and the resignation of Professor Frank L. Douglas
Frank L. Douglas
Frank L. Douglas M.D., Ph.D. is a Guyanese American medical doctor and researcher. Douglas resigned from his appointment as a professor of practice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in July 2007 after the university's administration refused to consider granting Assistant Professor James...
in protest.
MIT faculty members have often been recruited to lead other colleges and universities; former Provost Robert A. Brown
Robert A. Brown
Robert A. Brown is the 10th president of Boston University. He was formerly the provost of MIT.-External links:*...
is President of Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
, former Provost Mark Wrighton
Mark S. Wrighton
Mark Stephen Wrighton is an American academic, a chemist, and the current Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Wrighton received his B.S. in Chemistry from Florida State University in 1969. While at Florida State, he won the Monsanto Chemistry Award for...
is Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
, former Associate Provost Alice Gast
Alice Gast
Alice Petry Gast is the 13th President of Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is Lehigh's first female president....
is president of Lehigh University
Lehigh University
Lehigh University is a private, co-educational university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley region of the United States. It was established in 1865 by Asa Packer as a four-year technical school, but has grown to include studies in a wide variety of disciplines...
, former Dean of the School of Science Robert J. Birgeneau is the Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, and former professor David Baltimore
David Baltimore
David Baltimore is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech...
had been President of Caltech. In addition, faculty members have been recruited to lead governmental agencies; for example, former professor Marcia McNutt
Marcia McNutt
Marcia Kemper McNutt is an American geophysicist. She is director of the United States Geological Survey and science adviser to the United States Secretary of the Interior....
is the director of the United States Geological Survey
United States Geological Survey
The United States Geological Survey is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, and the natural hazards that threaten it. The organization has four major science disciplines, concerning biology,...
, urban studies professor Xavier de Souza Briggs is currently the associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, and biology professor Eric Lander
Eric Lander
Eric Steven Lander is a Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , a member of the Whitehead Institute, and director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard who has devoted his career toward realizing the promise of the human genome for medicine. He is co-chair of U.S...
is a co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Alumni
Many of MIT's over 120,000 alumni and alumnae have had considerable success in scientific research, public service, education, and business. As of 2011, twenty-four MIT alumni have won the Nobel Prize, forty-four have been selected as Rhodes Scholars, and fifty-five have been selected as Marshall Scholars.Alumni in American politics and public service include Chairman of the Federal Reserve
Chairman of the Federal Reserve
The Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System is the head of the central banking system of the United States. Known colloquially as "Chairman of the Fed," or in market circles "Fed Chairman" or "Fed Chief"...
Ben Bernanke
Ben Bernanke
Ben Shalom Bernanke is an American economist, and the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States. During his tenure as Chairman, Bernanke has overseen the response of the Federal Reserve to late-2000s financial crisis....
, MA-1
Massachusetts's 1st congressional district
Massachusetts's 1st congressional district is in western and central Massachusetts. The largest Massachusetts district in area, it covers about one-third of the state and is more rural than the rest. It has the state's highest point, Mount Greylock...
Representative John Olver
John Olver
John Walter Olver is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1991. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Early in his career, he was a chemistry professor and served in both chambers of the Massachusetts General Court....
, CA-13
California's 13th congressional district
California's 13th congressional district is a congressional district in the U.S. state of California that includes portions of Alameda and Santa Clara counties.The district is currently represented by Democrat Fortney "Pete" Stark.-Voting:...
Representative Pete Stark
Pete Stark
Fortney Hillman "Pete" Stark, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1973. He is a member of the Democratic Party. Currently he is the 5th most senior Representative, as well as 6th most senior member of Congress overall...
, former National Economic Council chairman Lawrence H. Summers, and former Council of Economic Advisors chairwoman Christina Romer
Christina Romer
Christina D. Romer is the Class of 1957 Garff B. Wilson Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration...
. MIT alumni in international politics include former British Foreign Minister
Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, commonly referred to as the Foreign Secretary, is a senior member of Her Majesty's Government heading the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and regarded as one of the Great Offices of State...
David Miliband
David Miliband
David Wright Miliband is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for South Shields since 2001, and was the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2007 to 2010. He is the elder son of the late Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband...
, Israeli Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Israel
The Prime Minister of Israel is the head of the Israeli government and the most powerful political figure in Israel . The prime minister is the country's chief executive. The official residence of the prime minister, Beit Rosh Hamemshala is in Jerusalem...
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel.Netanyahu is the first and, to...
, Greek Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Greece
The Prime Minister of Greece , officially the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic , is the head of government of the Hellenic Republic and the leader of the Greek cabinet. The current interim Prime Minister is Lucas Papademos, a former Vice President of the European Central Bank, following...
Lucas Papademos
Lucas Papademos
Lucas Papademos is a Greek economist who has been appointed as Prime Minister of Greece since 11 November 2011.Previously, he was Governor of the Bank of Greece from 1994 to 2002 and Vice President of the European Central Bank from 2002 to 2010...
, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annan is a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the UN from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 2006...
, physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Richard Feynman
Richard Feynman
Richard Phillips Feynman was an American physicist known for his work in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as in particle physics...
, and former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister
Council of Ministers of Iraq
The Cabinet of Iraq is the executive branch of the government of Iraq.The National Assembly of Iraq elects a President of State who along with two deputies form the Presidency Council. The Presidency Council appoints the Prime Minister who appoints the Council of Ministers, all of whom must be...
Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Chalabi
Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi is an Iraqi politician. He was interim oil minister in Iraq in April-May 2005 and December-January 2006 and deputy prime minister from May 2005 until May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was...
.
MIT alumni founded or co-founded many notable companies, such as Intel
Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...
, McDonnell
James Smith McDonnell
James Smith "Mac" McDonnell was an American aviation pioneer and founder of McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, later McDonnell Douglas.-Early life:...
Douglas
Donald Wills Douglas, Sr.
Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. was a United States aircraft industrialist and founder of the Douglas Aircraft Company in 1921 .-Early life:...
, Texas Instruments
Cecil Howard Green
Cecil Howard Green was a British-born American geophysicist who trained at the University of British Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
, 3Com
Robert Metcalfe
Robert Melancton Metcalfe is an electrical engineer from the United States who co-invented Ethernet, founded 3Com and formulated Metcalfe's Law., he is a general partner of Polaris Venture Partners...
, Qualcomm
Andrew Viterbi
Andrew James Viterbi, Ph.D. is an Italian-American electrical engineer and businessman who co-founded Qualcomm Inc....
, Bose
Amar Bose
Amar Gopal Bose is an Bengali American electrical engineer, sound engineer and billionaire entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of Bose Corporation...
, Raytheon
Vannevar Bush
Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
, Koch Industries
Fred C. Koch
Fred Chase Koch was an American chemical engineer and entrepreneur who founded the oil refinery firm that later became Koch Industries, the second-largest privately-held company in the United States....
, Rockwell International
Willard Rockwell
Willard Frederick Rockwell, Sr. was a businessman who helped shape and name what eventually became the Rockwell International company....
, Genentech
Robert A. Swanson
Robert A. Swanson was a venture capitalist who cofounded the biotechnology giant Genentech in 1976 with Herbert Boyer. Genentech is a pioneer in the field, and it remains one of the leading biotech companies in the world....
, and Campbell Soup. According to the British newspaper, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, "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 between them generate global revenues of about $1.9tn (£1.2tn) a year. If MIT was a country, it would have the 11th highest GDP of any nation in the world." MIT managed $718.2 million in research expenditures and an $8.0 billion endowment in 2009.
Prominent institutions of higher education have been led by MIT alumni, including the University of California
David S. Saxon
David S. Saxon was an American physicist and educator who served as the President of the University of California system as well as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation.Saxon was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. He attended MIT where he earned...
system, Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University
William R. Brody
William Ralph Brody is an American radiologist and academic administrator. He is the President of the Salk Institute and former President of The Johns Hopkins University, a position which he had held from 1996 to 2009....
, Carnegie Mellon University
Jared Cohon
Jared Leigh Cohon is the eighth President of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.He holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology,...
, Tufts University, Rochester Institute of Technology
Albert J. Simone
Dr. Albert Joseph Simone is a former president of the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York, USA.Simone earned his Bachelor of Arts from Tufts in 1957, and his PhD from MIT in 1962....
, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Northeastern University, Lahore University of Management Sciences
Adil Najam
Adil Najam is a globally renowned Pakistani academic and intellectual. He is a leading expert on issues related to developing country environmental policy, especially climate change, and also on the politics of South Asia. He was the Director of the Frederick S...
, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Shirley Jackson (physicist)
Shirley Ann Jackson is an American physicist, and the 18th president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She received her Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973, becoming the first African American woman to earn a doctorate from MIT.-Early life and...
, Tecnológico de Monterrey
Eugenio Garza Sada
Eugenio Garza Sada was a Mexican businessman and philanthropist who founded the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in 1943.-Early life:Garza Sada was born to Isaac Garza and Consuelo Sada...
, Purdue University
Martin C. Jischke
Martin C. Jischke is a prominent American higher-education administrator and advocate, and was the tenth president of Purdue University.Dr...
, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
T. Marshall Hahn
Thomas Marshall Hahn Jr. was President of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University from 1962 to 1974 and Director of Georgia Pacific from 1983 to 1993. He received his B.S...
and Quaid-e-Azam University
Pervez Hoodbhoy
Dr. Prof. Pervez Amirali Hoodbhoy , is a Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist and political-defence analyst. He is the professor of nuclear and high-energy physics, and the head of the Physics Department at the Quaid-e-Azam University . He graduated and also received PhD from MIT and continues to...
.
More than one third of the United States' manned spaceflights have included MIT-educated astronauts (among them Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
Lunar Module
Apollo Lunar Module
The Apollo Lunar Module was the lander portion of the Apollo spacecraft built for the US Apollo program by Grumman to carry a crew of two from lunar orbit to the surface and back...
Pilot Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...
), more than any university excluding the United States service academies.
Noted alumni in non-scientific fields include author Hugh Lofting
Hugh Lofting
Hugh John Lofting was a British author, trained as a civil engineer, who created the character of Doctor Dolittle — one of the classics of children's literature.-Personal life:...
, sculptor Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
, Boston
Boston (band)
Boston is an American rock band from Boston, Massachusetts that achieved its most notable successes during the 1970s and 1980s. Centered on guitarist, keyboardist, songwriter, and producer Tom Scholz, the band is a staple of classic rock radio playlists...
guitarist Tom Scholz
Tom Scholz
Donald Thomas "Tom" Scholz is an American rock musician, songwriter, guitarist, pianist, inventor, and mechanical engineer, best known as the founder of the hard rock band Boston. He is also the inventor of the Rockman guitar amplifier...
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
columnist and Nobel Prize Winning economist Paul Krugman
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, Centenary Professor at the London School of Economics, and an op-ed columnist for The New York Times...
, The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve
The Bell Curve is a best-selling and controversial 1994 book by the Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray...
author Charles Murray
Charles Murray (author)
Charles Alan Murray is an American libertarian political scientist, author, columnist, and pundit working as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, DC...
, United States Supreme Court building
United States Supreme Court building
The Supreme Court Building is the seat of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is situated in Washington, D.C. at 1 First Street, NE, on the block immediately east of the United States Capitol. The building is under the jurisdiction of the Architect of the Capitol. On May 4, 1987, the Supreme...
architect Cass Gilbert
Cass Gilbert
- Historical impact :Gilbert is considered a skyscraper pioneer; when designing the Woolworth Building he moved into unproven ground — though he certainly was aware of the ground-breaking work done by Chicago architects on skyscrapers and once discussed merging firms with the legendary Daniel...
, Pritzker Prize
Pritzker Prize
The Pritzker Architecture Prize is awarded annually by the Hyatt Foundation to honour "a living architect whose built work demonstrates a combination of those qualities of talent, vision and commitment, which has produced consistent and significant contributions to humanity and the built...
-winning architects I.M. Pei and Gordon Bunshaft
Gordon Bunshaft
Gordon Bunshaft was an architect educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1988, Gordon Bunshaft nominated himself for the Pritzker Prize and eventually won it.-Career:...
.
Footnotes
- a. "We looked up and discussed many colors. We all desired cardinal red; it has stood for a thousand years on land and sea in England's emblem; it makes one-half of the stripes on America's flag; it has always stirred the heart and mind of man; it stands for 'red blood' and all that 'red blood' stands for in life. But we were not unanimous for the gray; some wanted blue, I recall. But it (the gray) seemed to me to stand for those quiet virtues of modesty and persistency and gentleness, which appealed to my mind as powerful; and I have come to believe, from observation and experience, to really be the most lasting influences in life and history....We recommended 'cardinal and steel gray.'" (Alfred T. Waite, Chairman of School Color Committee, Class of 1879)
- b. The other privately owned Land Grant institution is Cornell UniversityCornell UniversityCornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
. - d. The University of Massachusetts was founded as the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1863.
- e. The Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) offers joint MD, MD-PhD, or Medical Engineering degrees in collaboration with Harvard Medical SchoolHarvard Medical SchoolHarvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....
. - f. Course numbers are traditionally presented in Roman numerals, e.g. Course XVIII for mathematics. Starting in 2002, the Bulletin (MIT's course catalog) started to use Arabic numeralsArabic numeralsArabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a numeral...
. Usage outside of the Bulletin varies, both RomanRoman numeralsThe numeral system of ancient Rome, or Roman numerals, uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values. The numbers 1 to 10 can be expressed in Roman numerals as:...
and Arabic numerals being used. - h. MIT's Building 7 and Harvard's Johnston Gate, the traditional entrances to each school, are 1.72 miles (2.77 km) apart along Massachusetts AvenueMassachusetts Avenue (Boston)Massachusetts Avenue, known to locals as Mass Ave, is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts, and several cities and towns northwest of Boston...
. - i. Vannevar BushVannevar BushVannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb as a primary organizer of the Manhattan Project, the founding of Raytheon, and the idea of the memex, an adjustable microfilm viewer...
was the director of the Office of Scientific Research and DevelopmentOffice of Scientific Research and DevelopmentThe Office of Scientific Research and Development was an agency of the United States federal government created to coordinate scientific research for military purposes during World War II. Arrangements were made for its creation during May 1941, and it was created formally by on June 28, 1941...
and general advisor to Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and Harry Truman, James Rhyne KillianJames Rhyne KillianDr. James Rhyne Killian, Jr. was the 10th president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1948 until 1959.-Career:...
was Special Assistant for Science and Technology for Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, and Jerome WiesnerJerome WiesnerJerome Bert Wiesner was an educator, a Science Advisor to U.S. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson, an advocate for arms control, and a critic of anti-ballistic-missile defense systems...
advised John F. KennedyJohn F. KennedyJohn Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and Lyndon Johnson. - j. The friezes of the marble-clad buildings surrounding Killian Court are carved in large Roman letters with the names of AristotleAristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, NewtonIsaac NewtonSir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
, PasteurLouis PasteurLouis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist born in Dole. He is remembered for his remarkable breakthroughs in the causes and preventions of diseases. His discoveries reduced mortality from puerperal fever, and he created the first vaccine for rabies and anthrax. His experiments...
, LavoisierAntoine LavoisierAntoine-Laurent de Lavoisier , the "father of modern chemistry", was a French nobleman prominent in the histories of chemistry and biology...
, FaradayMichael FaradayMichael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
, ArchimedesArchimedesArchimedes of Syracuse was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Among his advances in physics are the foundations of hydrostatics, statics and an...
, da VinciLeonardo da VinciLeonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
, DarwinCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
, and CopernicusNicolaus CopernicusNicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....
; each of these names is surmounted by a cluster of appropriately related names in smaller letters. Lavoisier, for example, is placed in the company of BoyleRobert BoyleRobert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...
, CavendishHenry CavendishHenry Cavendish FRS was a British scientist noted for his discovery of hydrogen or what he called "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable air, which formed water on combustion, in a 1766 paper "On Factitious Airs". Antoine Lavoisier later reproduced Cavendish's experiment and...
, PriestleyJoseph PriestleyJoseph Priestley, FRS was an 18th-century English theologian, Dissenting clergyman, natural philosopher, chemist, educator, and political theorist who published over 150 works...
, DaltonJohn DaltonJohn Dalton FRS was an English chemist, meteorologist and physicist. He is best known for his pioneering work in the development of modern atomic theory, and his research into colour blindness .-Early life:John Dalton was born into a Quaker family at Eaglesfield, near Cockermouth, Cumberland,...
, Gay LussacJoseph Louis Gay-Lussac- External links :* from the American Chemical Society* from the Encyclopædia Britannica, 10th Edition * , Paris...
, BerzeliusJöns Jakob BerzeliusJöns Jacob Berzelius was a Swedish chemist. He worked out the modern technique of chemical formula notation, and is together with John Dalton, Antoine Lavoisier, and Robert Boyle considered a father of modern chemistry...
, WoehlerFriedrich WöhlerFriedrich Wöhler was a German chemist, best known for his synthesis of urea, but also the first to isolate several chemical elements.-Biography:He was born in Eschersheim, which belonged to aau...
, LiebigJustus von LiebigJustus von Liebig was a German chemist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and worked on the organization of organic chemistry. As a professor, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the...
, BunsenRobert BunsenRobert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium and rubidium with Gustav Kirchhoff. Bunsen developed several gas-analytical methods, was a pioneer in photochemistry, and did early work in the field of organoarsenic...
, MendelejeffDmitri MendeleevDmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev , was a Russian chemist and inventor. He is credited as being the creator of the first version of the periodic table of elements...
[sic], Perkin, and van't HoffJacobus Henricus van 't HoffJacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Jr. was a Dutch physical and organic chemist and the first winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He is best known for his discoveries in chemical kinetics, chemical equilibrium, osmotic pressure, and stereochemistry...
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