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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Motto	Mens et Manus (Mind and Hand)
Established	1861, Opened 1865
Type	Private
Endowment	$7 billion USD
Staff	983
President	Susan Hockfield
Undergraduates	4,136
Postgraduates	6,184
Location	Cambridge, Mass. USA
Campus	Urban, 168 acres/68 ha
Athletics	Division III 41 varsity teams
Colors	Cardinal and Gray
Mascot	Beaver
Website	mit.edu

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private research university located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Its mission and culture are guided by an emphasis on teaching and research grounded in practical applications of science and technology. MIT is organized into five schools and one college, containing thirty-four academic departments and fifty-three interdisciplinary laboratories, centers and programs^[1] . Founded in 1861 by William Barton Rogers, MIT has contributed to defense research during World War Two and the early decades of the Cold War as a federally funded research and development center. The Institute has played a role in developing the electronic digital computer^[2] , the inertial navigation systems used in missiles and spacecraft, and biomedical engineering.

Contents 1 History 2 Ranking and reputation 3 Culture and student life 3.1 Undergraduate housing 3.2 Brass Rat 4 Undergraduate academics 4.1 Course requirements 4.2 Class structure 5 Graduate academics 6 Campus 6.1 Naming and pronunciation 6.2 Early constructions 6.3 Recent building efforts 7 Organization 7.1 MIT schools 7.2 Other MIT labs and groups 7.3 External relationships 8 MIT people 9 Further reading 10 References 11 External links

History

In 1861, Massachusetts approved a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History," submitted by William Barton Rogers, a natural scientist. Rogers saw this as a first step towards establishing a new kind of independent educational institution relevant to an industrializing America.^{[citation needed]} With the charter approved, Rogers began raising funds, developing a curriculum and looking for a suitable location. His efforts were hampered by the Civil War, and as a result its first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865.^[3]

Construction on the first MIT building was completed in Boston's Back Bay in 1866. In the following years, it taught sciences and engineering and became financially troubled.^{[citation needed]} Some people wanted it to merge with Harvard University which was wealthier and did not focus as strongly on science compared to the liberal arts.^{[citation needed]} Around 1900, a merger with Harvard was proposed, but was cancelled after protests from MIT's alumni.^[4] In 1916, MIT moved across the river to its present location in Cambridge.

MIT has been nominally coeducational since admitting Ellen Swallow Richards in 1870. Female students, however, remained a tiny minority (numbered in dozens) prior to the completion of the first women's dormitory, McCormick Hall, in 1964. In the past few years, the ratio of women to men among undergraduate students has approached 1:1.^{[citation needed]}

After World War II, the United States government began to fund projects at research universities with immediate or potential defense or national security applications (see Vannevar Bush, Lincoln Laboratory, and Charles Stark Draper Laboratory).

During the Watergate scandal, it was revealed that President Nixon's counsel Charles W. Colson had prepared an "enemies list" tabulating people "hostile to the administration." MIT had more names on the list than any other single organization, among them its president Jerome Wiesner and professor Noam Chomsky. Memos revealed during Watergate indicated that Nixon had ordered MIT's federal subsidy cut "in view of Wiesner's anti-defense bias" (see the article on Wiesner for details)^[5] .

Throughout its history, MIT has focused on invention.^{[citation needed]} A 1997 report by MIT showed that the aggregated revenues produced by companies founded by MIT and its graduates would make it the twenty-fourth largest economy in the world.^[6] In 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put course materials online as part of its OpenCourseWare project. That same year, 1990–2004 MIT president Charles Vest admitted that MIT had severely restricted the career of women faculty members, researchers, and students through sexist discrimination, and promised to take steps to redress the issue.^{[citation needed]} In August 2004, Susan Hockfield, a molecular neurobiologist, was appointed as MIT's first female president. She took office as the Institute's 16th president on December 6, 2004.

MIT has developed the use of laboratory instruction^[7] . Its founding philosophy is that "the teaching, not of the manipulations and minute details of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of all the scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them;"^[8] for the Radiation Laboratory's contributions to radar development during the Second World War; for contributions to electronic computation, particularly Project Whirlwind and magnetic core memory; and as an influencer of U. S. national science policies during the years of the Cold War (Leslie, 1994).

As of 2006, MIT's endowment stands at $6.7 billion, sixth-largest in the US. For a survey of the ways popular culture has viewed the school — many of them not so serious — see MIT in popular culture. In addition, see MIT people for a list of individuals who are or have been associated with the Institute.

Ranking and reputation

MIT is ranked #2 overall among the world's top 200 universities by The Times Higher Education Supplement (2005) and #1 worldwide in technology.^[9]

The National Research Council, in a 1995 study ranking research universities in the US, ranked MIT #1 in "reputation" and #4 for "citations or awards density" for all programs. ^[10]

MIT's graduate programs in chemistry, computer science, economics, engineering, mathematics, and physics placed first in U. S. News and World Reports' 2007 rankings. MIT has also been ranked as the #1 graduate school for engineering since U.S. News began ranking programs.^{[citation needed]}

According to the US News and World Report "Best Colleges" survey, MIT's overall undergraduate program ranking has fluctuated between #3 and #7 in the nation. However, it is the only school to be ranked #1 in "academic reputation" every single year^{[citation needed]} (a rank shared by as many as five schools).^[11] The Atlantic Monthly ranked MIT in 2004 as the #1 most selective undergraduate college in the United States.^{[citation needed]}

Culture and student life

MIT notes that it has never awarded an honorary degree, and that the only way to receive an MIT diploma is to earn it.^[12] In addition, it does not award athletic scholarships, ad eundem degrees, or Latin honors upon graduation — the philosophy is that the honor is in being an MIT graduate. It does on rare occasions award honorary professorships; Winston Churchill was so honored in 1949 and Salman Rushdie in 1993.^[13] MIT faculty and students pride themselves on pure intellectual ability and achievement, and MIT professors often say that they grade with "all the letters of the alphabet." Due to these academic pressures, MIT culture is characterized by a love-hate relationship. The school's informal motto is the initialism IHTFP^[14] ("I hate this fucking place," jocularly euphemized as "I have truly found paradise," "Institute has the finest professors," etc.).

In 1970, the then-Dean of Institute Relations, Benson R. Snyder, published The Hidden Curriculum, in which he argues that a mass of unstated assumptions and requirements dominates MIT students' lives and inhibits their ability to function creatively. Snyder contends that these unwritten regulations often outweigh the "formal curriculum"'s effect, and that the situation is not unique to MIT.

Many of the values of the Institute have influenced the hacker ethic. The term "hacker" and much of hacker culture originated at MIT, starting with the TMRC and MIT AI Lab in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Resident hackers have included Richard Stallman and professors Gerald Jay Sussman and Tom Knight. At MIT, however, the term "hack" has multiple meanings. "To hack" can mean to physically explore areas (often on-campus, but also off) that are generally off-limits such as rooftops and steam tunnels. "Hack" as a noun also means an elaborate practical joke, and not just a clever technical feat. See also: MIT hacks.

MIT's particular strain of anti-authoritarianism has manifested itself in other forms. In 1977, two female students, juniors Susan Gilbert and Roxanne Ritchie, were disciplined for publishing an article on April 28 of that year in the "alternative" MIT campus weekly Thursday. Entitled "Consumer Guide to MIT Men," the article was a sex survey of 36 men the two claimed to have slept with, and the men were rated according to their sexual performance. Gilbert and Ritchie had intended to turn the tables on the rating systems and facebooks men use for women, but their article led not only to disciplinary action against them, but also to a protest petition signed by 200 students, as well as condemnation by President Jerome B. Wiesner, who published a fierce criticism of the article. ^{[15] [16]}

MIT has a student athletics program offering 41 varsity-level sports ^[17] . The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot since 1914 being a beaver^[18] , "nature's engineer." (Or sometimes: "The beaver is the engineer among animals—MIT students are the animals among engineers.") Lester Gardner, a member of the Class of 1898, provided the following justification: "The beaver not only typifies the Tech, but his habits are particularly our own. The beaver is noted for his engineering and mechanical skills and habits of industry. His habits are nocturnal. He does his best work in the dark." They participate in the NCAA's Division III, the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference, the New England Football Conference, and NCAA's Division I and Eastern Association of Rowing Colleges (EARC) for crew. They fielded several dominant intercollegiate Tiddlywinks teams through 1980, winning national and world championships^[19] . MIT teams have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, track and field, cross country, crew, and water polo.

MIT also features a campus radio station, an annual "mystery hunt" run on Martin Luther King Day weekend, and one of the oldest modern Western square dance clubs in the country. The MIT Science Fiction Society claims to have the "world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction" in English.

Undergraduate housing

MIT guarantees four-year dormitory housing for all undergraduates^[20] , and 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. Students are permitted to select their dorm and floor upon arrival on campus, and as a result diverse communities arise in living groups. Although many dorms contain a wide range of living options, the dorms east of Massachusetts Avenue are stereotypically more involved in countercultural activities.

Many upperclassmen choose to live in fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups^[21] , most of which are located across the river in the Back Bay owing to MIT's historic location there. Before 2002, freshmen who obtained membership in these organizations could move in immediately, bypassing the dormitory system. 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 ^[22] .

Brass Rat

Main article: MIT class ring

Many MIT students and graduates wear an MIT class ring, which is large, heavy, distinctive, and recognizable from a distance. Originally created in 1929, the ring's official name is the "Standard Technology Ring," but its colloquial name is far more well known—the "Brass Rat." The undergraduate ring design 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 shank, flanking a large rectangular bezel bearing an image of a beaver. To show that one has graduated from the Insitute, one wears the ring so that the beaver's feet point to the tips of one's fingers, and the wearer looks back on MIT via the Cambridge skyline; those who have not graduated wear the ring so the beaver's feet point toward the wearer's wrist, and the wearer looks away from MIT via the Boston skyline.

Undergraduate academics

There is a large amount of pressure in MIT classes, which has been characterized as "drinking from a fire hose" (often expanded with the explanatory "you get hosed and your parents get soaked") or "academic boot camp." Although the perceived pressure is high, the failure rate, both from classes and the Institute as a whole, is low^{[citation needed]}.

Students are not assigned letter grades in their first semester; instead, they are graded Pass/No Record. To allow the students to gradually adjust to regular grading, second semester is ABC/No Record. For both semesters, classes that a student fails are noted on the internal transcript but erased from all external records. (Prior to the 2002-03 academic year, both terms were graded Pass/No Record.) In subsequent terms, students receive letter grades without a modifier (+ or -). A student's grade point average is calculated on a 5.0 scale, with A=5, B=4, C=3, D=2, and F=0.

Majors are numbered with Roman numerals; for example, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is Course VI, while Mathematics is Course XVIII. Students will typically refer to their major by the course number, saying "he's Course Eighteen" rather than "he's a math major." Subjects within each course also have numeric identifications, which most students use more frequently than the written names; the course number is given with an Arabic numeral, then a decimal point, and a subject number. This pattern differs from that of many U.S. universities; the course which many universities would designate as "Physics 101" is, at MIT, "8.01."

Course requirements

All undergraduate students are required to take a variety of courses (called the General Institute Requirements, or GIRs) beyond those required for their major. These include physics, biology, chemistry, calculus, four quarters of physical education, and eight terms of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (HASS). The core Physics curriculum has recently shifted to a seminar-style "technology-enabled" format which has been met with praise from some students and complaints from others. The HASS requirements are intricately constructed: students must take three "distribution" or "HASS-D" classes, which are designed so that they give broad subject overviews with few or no prerequisites. Furthermore, students must choose a "concentration" among the HASS subdepartments (which are not the same as the numeric HASS-D categories). Concentrations typically require three or four classes within that subject.

Those students who graduated earlier than the Class of 2005 had a writing requirement which was divided between "Phase I" and "Phase II." A Phase II paper typically involved researching a topic in one's field of interest and writing about it in a suitable style for a textbook or a journal article. More recent graduating classes have exchanged this procedure for the "Communication Intensive" system. Students are required to take two "CI" classes within their chosen major ("CI-M" courses). These classes are chosen by the department to instruct the students in the forms of communication used in that field. In addition to the CI-Ms, students are required to take two CI classes outside their major, chosen from the HASS departments. ^[23]

The General Institute Requirements, and in particular the HASS arrangements, have drawn criticism from some quarters. In the spring of 2005, a student-operated advisory committee was formed to address the merits of changing the GIR curricula. The committee's initial report stressed the need to simplify the HASS system in particular. Blog-based discussions brought student input on the initial report, but the committee did not substantially revise their paper, deciding instead to include an addendum with students' opinions that had been expressed online. ^[24] A subsequent proposal includes a shift away from the original HASS requirements to voluntary classes for those interested in humanities.

Class structure

Most of the science and engineering classes follow a standard pattern. Typically, a professor gives a lecture that explains a concept. Then, teaching assistants (or sometimes tenured professors) lead recitation sections to explore fuller details, or often to provide students help on homework problems. Problem sets (colloquially known as "psets"), given roughly every week, are designed to enable the student to master the concept. Students often gather in informal groups to solve the problem sets and it is within these groups that much of the actual learning takes place. Over time, students compile "bibles," collections of problem set and examination questions and answers. They may be created over several years and are often handed down "from generation to generation"—bearing in mind that "generations" of student time may be short-lived.

These "bibles" were one issue addressed in Snyder's The Hidden Curriculum. After studying the behavior of MIT and Wellesley students, Snyder observed that the "bibles" are often in fact counterproductive; they fool professors into believing that their classes are imparting knowledge as intended, locking professors and students into a feedback cycle to the detriment of actual education.

Although professors often use the average performance of a class to gauge the difficulty of an exam or a course, MIT policy does not permit grade cutoffs based purely on predetermined percentages or statistics (i.e., grading "on a curve") ^[25] . This policy is intended, in part, to prevent a competitive atmosphere where the students want one another to do poorly in order to improve their own prospects. Most classes end with a grade distribution centered around a B^{[citation needed]}.

Graduate academics

Unlike most colleges and universities around the world, MIT graduate students outnumber its undergraduates (60% of the student body are graduate students ^{[citation needed]}). MIT graduate students can work towards Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Doctor of Science (ScD), Engineer, Master of Science (SM), Master of Engineering (MEng), Master of Architecture (MArch), Master in City Planning (MCP), and Master of Business Administration (MBA) depending on their department affiliation.

In addition to the work that each department does for its graduate program, the Graduate Students Office provides additional support for the graduate students, and the Graduate Student Council organizes many events (such as the MIT Graduate Student Orientation) and lobbies for the interests of students. In addition to these two Institute-wide organizations, there are many departmental and special-interest groups that cater to the graduate community.

Campus

MIT's main Cambridge campus spans approximately a mile of the Charles River front. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue, with most academic buildings to the east and most dormitories and student life facilities to the west. Essentially all classes are held on main campus, although MIT owns or leases a number of research facilities throughout Cambridge and the greater Boston area.

A network of underground tunnels connects many of the main campus buildings, providing protection from the Cambridge weather. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge, which is marked off in the fanciful unit called the Smoot. The Kendall MBTA Red Line station is located on the far northeastern edge of the campus. The neighborhood of MIT is a mixture of high tech companies combined with residential neighborhoods of Cambridge (see Kendall Square).

Somewhat controversially [1], MIT operates a highly visible nuclear reactor on campus. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel and a low-emission cogeneration plant that provides for nearly all of the campus electricity and heating requirements.

Naming and pronunciation

MIT buildings [2] 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 only by number while residence halls are referred to by name. Rooms on campus are referred to by building number designation, followed by a dash, followed by the floor in the building on which the room resides, followed by the room number on that floor. Thus, the classroom "10-250" (pronounced "ten two fifty") is actually room "50" on the second floor of building 10. Campus visitors will often be confused when they hear students say something like "I have 18.02 ['eighteen oh two'] in 2-102 ['two one oh two'] and then 5.111 ['five eleven one' (never 'five one eleven')] in 10-250 ['ten two fifty']," and indeed this contributes to MIT's eccentric reputation. (For information on pronouncing course number designations, see here.) However, based on the above, it is clear that this phrase translates into English as "I have Multivariable Calculus in building 2, first floor, room 2 followed by Introductory Chemistry in building 10, second floor, room 50."

The organization of building numbers on campus may appear random, but there is some order to it and it is believed to roughly correspond to the order in which the buildings were built. Buildings 1-10 were the original main campus, with building 10, the location of the Great Dome, designed to be the main entrance. Buildings 1-8 are arranged symmetrically around building 10, with odd-numbered buildings to the west and even-numbered buildings to the east.

The east side of campus has "the 6s", several connecting buildings that end with the digit 6. (Buildings 6, 16, 26, 36, 56 and 66, with buildings 46 across the street from 36.) The 30s buildings run along Vassar street on the north side of main campus. Buildings that are East of Ames Street are prefixed with an 'E' (e.g. E52, the Sloan Bulding); those West of Massachusetts Avenue generally start with a 'W' (e.g. W20, the Stratton Student Center).

Early constructions

One striking part of the campus is Killian Court, also known as the Great Court, in front of the Great Dome, where commencement is held (as well as the annual J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Celebration on May 2, for several years following his death on May 2, 1972), but most of the campus contains a jumble of different architectural styles which many accuse of lacking elegance. A few other buildings are architecturally significant, including Baker House (the dormitory designed by Alvar Aalto) and Eero Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel. The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus are known officially as the Maclaurin buildings, completed in 1916, after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction; they surround Killian Court on three sides. On one side of Killian Court is the Infinite Corridor, which serves as something of a main artery for the campus, connecting east campus with west campus. The Infinite Corridor runs through two domes: the Great Dome, which is featured in most publicity shots, and the lesser dome (surmounting what is known as "Lobby 7" after its building number), which opens into Massachusetts Avenue, and which is the entrance most often used as well as the official address of the Institute as a whole. The Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses" uses a shot of the Great Dome to depict a generic building on a planet dominated by ancient Roman culture.

The Maclaurin buildings, in many ways the public "entrance" of MIT, were designed by William Welles Bosworth based on plans developed by wealthy alumnus and hydraulic engineer John Ripley Freeman. Bosworth's design was drawn so as to admit large amounts of light through exceptionally large windows on the first and second floors, many internal windows—not only on office doors but above door-level, and skylights over huge stairwells. The interior decor of the Maclaurin buildings is stylistically consistent throughout. Its major architectural features are the Infinite Corridor, an impressive central dome, and the expansive domed lobby at the main 77 Massachusetts Ave. entrance. The friezes of these buildings are carved in large Roman letters with the names of Aristotle, Newton, Franklin, Pasteur, Lavoisier, Faraday, Archimedes, da Vinci, Darwin, and Copernicus; 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 Boyle, Cavendish, Priestley, Dalton, Gay Lussac, Berzelius, Woehler, Liebig, Bunsen, Mendelejeff [sic], Perkin, and van't Hoff.

I. M. Pei '40 designed a number of MIT buildings constructed in this period, including the Green Building (Building 54), headquarters of the Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science Department and the tallest building on campus; Building 66, the Chemical Engineering Department; and the Weisner Building (Building E15), the Media Laboratory, whose tiled exterior was designed by Kenneth Noland.

Recent building efforts

A major building effort has been underway for several years (as of 2006), including the Simmons Hall dormitory (designed by Steven Holl), the Zesiger sports and fitness center, and a new home for the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research (designed by Charles Correa).

The Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center opened in March, 2004. Boston Globe architecture columnist Robert Campbell wrote a glowing appraisal of the building on April 25th. According to Campbell, "the Stata is always going to look unfinished. It also looks as if it's about to collapse. Columns tilt at scary angles. Walls teeter, swerve, and collide in random curves and angles. Materials change wherever you look: brick, mirror-surface steel, brushed aluminum, brightly colored paint, corrugated metal. Everything looks improvised, as if thrown up at the last moment. That's the point. The Stata's appearance is a metaphor for the freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that's supposed to occur inside it." Campbell stated that the cost overruns and delays in completion of the Stata Center are of no more importance than similar problems associated with the building of St. Paul's Cathedral. The 2005 Kaplan/Newsweek guide "How to Get into College,"^[26] which lists twenty-five universities its editors consider notable in some respect, recognizes MIT as having the "hottest architecture," placing most of its emphasis on the Stata Center.

The building of the Stata Center necessitated the removal of the much-beloved Building 20 in 1998. Building 20 was erected hastily during World War II as a temporary building that housed the historic Radiation Laboratory. Over the course of fifty-five years, its "temporary" nature allowed research groups to have more space, and to make more creative use of that space, than was possible in more respectable buildings. Simson Garfinkel quoted Professor Jerome Y. Lettvin as saying "You might regard it as the womb of the Institute. It is kind of messy, but by God it is procreative!"^[27]

For an overview of the various sculptures and art-related installations at MIT, see MIT artwork.

Organization

MIT schools

MIT is organized into five schools and one college which contain twenty-six academic departments:

• School of Architecture and Planning: Architecture, Media Arts and Sciences, Urban Studies and Planning
• School of Engineering: Aeronautics and Astronautics, Biological Engineering Division, Computational and Systems Biology, Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Engineering Systems Division, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Science and Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences: Anthropology, Comparative Media Studies, Economics, Foreign Languages and Literatures, History, Humanities, Linguistics and Philosophy, Literature, Music and Theatre Arts, Political Science, Science, Technology, and Society, Writing and Humanistic Studies
• Alfred P. Sloan School of Management
• School of Science: Biology, Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Chemistry, Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Mathematics, Physics
• The Whitaker College of Health Sciences and Technology: Also known as the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

Once characterized by James R. Killian as "a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts,"^[28] , MIT has no school of law or of medicine.

Other MIT labs and groups

MIT also has many laboratories, centers and programs which cut across disparate disciplines. These include:

• Research Laboratory of Electronics
• MIT Media Lab
• Lincoln Laboratory
• MIT Enterprise Forum^[29]

• MIT Entrepreneurship Center
• MIT Center for eBusiness
• Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
• The Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
• MIT Center for Theoretical Physics
• Radiation Lab
• Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation^[30]

• Center for Cancer Research^[31]

• Francis Bitter Magnet Lab^[32]

• Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies^[33]

• McGovern Institute for Brain Research^[34]

• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory^[35]

• Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research
• Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
• MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab^[36]

• Lean Aerospace Initiative^[37]

• MIT Operations Research Center^[38]

• MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center
• George R. Wallace Astrophysical Observatory

External relationships

MIT has close ties to a number of institutions.

MIT has a friendly rivalry with Harvard University^[39] which dates back to the earliest days of the Institute, and the aforementioned merger talks between the two schools. Today, they cooperate as much as they compete, with many joint conferences and programs, including the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology,^[40] the Broad Institute, the Center for Ultracold Atoms, Eaton-Peabody Laboratory, and the Harvard-MIT Data Center.^[41] In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register without any additional fees, for credits toward their own school's degrees. The relationship and proximity between the two institutions is remarkable, considering they are often regarded as the world's top two universities.^[42]

Another cross-registration program exists between MIT and Wellesley College, a renowned women's college in suburban Wellesley, MA. The city of Cambridge is notable for the presence of two major research universities within two miles of each other. A third major research university, Boston University, is located between MIT and Harvard on the Boston side of the Charles River. These three schools jointly run the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology.^[43]

The Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, now an independent defense contractor, was founded as the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and still shares some facilities and faculty with MIT. (The Draper Lab, which designed missile guidance systems, was spun off during the Vietnam War to assuage antiwar feeling on campus and in the city of Cambridge, while holding on to the more lucrative defense contracts at Lincoln Laboratory.) The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution runs its graduate program jointly with MIT.

MIT maintains an undergraduate exchange program with the University of Cambridge in England, in a partnership known as the Cambridge-MIT Institute, which was established to bring the entrepreneurial spirit of MIT to the United Kingdom and to increase knowledge exchange between universities and industry. MIT also has close but informal ties with one of the United Kingdom's top engineering universities, the University of Southampton, which has its own thriving collection of spin-off businesses.

MIT was instrumental in the setup and development of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IIT Kanpur). A large number of students from IIT Kanpur have pursued advanced degrees in the USA and many of them have grown to become international authorities in critical areas of science and technology. Alumni of IIT form the second largest group of graduate students at MIT (the largest group is MIT undergraduates).

MIT has also set up relationships with the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore known as the Singapore-MIT alliance. This has enabled it to bring quality engineering education to a higher number of students. In 2004, MIT set up the MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Program modelled on its own masters degree in logistics. The MIT-Zaragoza program was set up with the local government of Aragon in Spain. The University of Zaragoza and MIT hope to further improve education in Europe.

The Malaysia University of Science and Technology (MUST) was set up under a collaborative agreement between MIT and MUST Ehsan Foundation. MUST's syllabi are modelled after MIT's selected courses in order to create a curriculum for MUST's Masters degree program.^[44]

MIT publishes the mass-market magazine Technology Review through a subsidiary company. Alumni of the Institute receive copies with an "MIT News" section added, so that Technology Review serves as the Institute's official alumni magazine.

MIT students are involved in a variety of community service projects, especially in educational outreach to middle and high school students. This ranges from programs held on the MIT campus to federal work-study working with students at a variety of local schools.

MIT people

As of 2005, 61 current or former members of the MIT community have won the Nobel Prize, 14 of them in the last five years. For more information, see Nobel Prize laureates by university affiliation

• List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology people

List of MIT Presidents:

• William Barton Rogers (1862–1870, 1879–1881)
• John Daniel Runkle (1870–1878)
• Francis Amasa Walker (1881–1897)
• James Crafts (1897–1900)
• Henry Smith Pritchett (1900–1907)
• Arthur Amos Noyes (acting 1907–1909)
• Richard Cockburn Maclaurin (1909–1920)
• Elihu Thomson (acting 1920–1921, 1922–1923)
• Ernest Fox Nichols (1921–1922)
• Samuel Wesley Stratton (1923–1930)
• Karl Taylor Compton (1930–1948)
• James Rhyne Killian (1948–1959)
• Julius Adams Stratton (1959–1966)
• Howard Wesley Johnson (1966–1971)
• Jerome Wiesner (1971–1980)
• Paul Edward Gray (1980–1990)
• Charles Marstiller Vest (1990–2004)
• Susan Hockfield (2004–)

Further reading

• Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford, Columbia University Press 1994

• T. F. Peterson, Nightwork: A History of Hacks and Pranks at MIT, MIT Press, 2003.

• Julius A. Stratton and Loretta H. Mannix, Mind and Hand: The Birth of MIT, MIT Press, 2005.

References

1. ^ MIT Facts 2006: Academic Schools and Departments, Divisions & Sections URL accessed on May 11,2006
2. ^ See Whirlwind (computer), Magnetic core memory, and Apollo guidance computer
3. ^ Andrews, Elizabeth, Nora Murphy, and Tom Rosko(2004), William Barton Rogers: MIT's Visionary Founder (Charter, laboratory instruction, first classes in Mercantile building).
4. ^ National Selection Committee Ballot - Power of the NSC. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
5. ^ "Lists of White House 'Enemies' and Memorandums Relating to Those Named," The New York Times, June 28 1973, p. 38.
6. ^ MIT: The Impact of Innovation. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
7. ^ 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, volume 4, p. 292: "[MIT] was a pioneer in introducing as a feature of its original plans laboratory instruction in physics, mechanics, and mining."
8. ^ The Founding of MIT, cites (1) Letter, William Barton Rogers to Henry Darwin Rogers, March 13, 1846, William Barton Rogers Papers (MC 1), Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Libraries.
9. ^ Wikipedia's summaries: Top universities overall (worldwide); Top universities worldwide for technology; Top universities worldwide for science
10. ^ Diamond, Nancy and Hugh Davis Graham (1995), How should we rate research universities?
11. ^ In U. S. News' ranking of "academic reputation," Harvard and Stanford are often tied with MIT at #1, and in the last several years, Princeton and Yale have also tied with it for #1.
12. ^ No honorary degrees is an MIT tradition going back to ... Thomas Jefferson. MIT News Office: (2001-06-08). Retrieved on 2006-05-07.:"MIT's founder, William Barton Rogers, regarded the practice of giving honorary degrees as 'literary almsgiving ... of spurious merit and noisy popularity....' Rogers was a geologist from the University of Virginia who believed in Thomas Jefferson's policy barring honorary degrees at the university, which was founded in 1819.... When Charles M. Vest... was offered the job of president of MIT in 1990, he met with Wiesner, who also had come to MIT from the University of Michigan. Wiesner, in ten words of concise persuasion, cited three worries of university presidents that Vest would not have at MIT—'No big time athletics. No medical school. No honorary degrees.'"
13. ^ Daniel C. Stevenson. "Rushdie Stuns Audience 26-100" MIT Tech Vol. 113, No. 61 (30 November 1993): 1.
14. ^ IHTFP. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
15. ^ http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_097/TECH_V097_S0241_P012.txt. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
16. ^ Ted Morgan, On Becoming American (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1978), pp. 330-1.
17. ^ Error on call to template:cite web: Parameters url and title must be specified Retrieved on June 8, 2006.
18. ^ Other schools with the beaver as their mascot include Babson College, which is less than fifteen miles from MIT, and Oregon State University.
19. ^ http://www-tech.mit.edu/archives/VOL_092/TECH_V092_S0210_P007.pdf. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
20. ^ http://web.mit.edu/housing/undergrad/faqs.html#Eligibility
21. ^ Building the Future of FSILGs: Project Aurora - Task Force Report. Retrieved on June 18, 2006.
22. ^ Institute Will Pay Kruegers $6M for Role in Death. Retrieved on June 18, 2006.
23. ^ Communication Requirement: Students and Advisors. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
24. ^ The Task Force: Students. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
25. ^ U-INFO: How You Are Graded. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
26. ^ "How to Get into College,". Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
27. ^ Garfinkel, Simpson (1991), "Building 20: The Procreative Eyesore," Technology Review, 94 (November/December 1991), page MIT11, as cited by the MIT Libraries website Quotes and Stories about Building 20
28. ^ {[cite web|url=http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/inaugurations/killian.html|author=James R. Killian|title=The Inaugural Address|date=1949-04-02|accessdate=2006-06-02}}
29. ^ MIT Enterprise Forum. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
30. ^ Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
31. ^ Center for Cancer Research. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
32. ^ Francis Bitter Magnet Lab. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
33. ^ Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
34. ^ McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
35. ^ Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
36. ^ MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
37. ^ Lean Aerospace Initiative. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
38. ^ MIT Operations Research Center. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
39. ^ "The friendly rivalry between Harvard and MIT is legendary. Yet, Harvard's loss of Samuelson to MIT represents at least one occasion where MIT's triumph is unquestioned." - page 24, Paul Samuelson: On Being an Economist (Szenberg, Michael; et al., Jorge Pinto Books, 2005)
40. ^ Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
41. ^ Harvard-MIT Data Center. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
42. ^ According to The Times Higher Education Supplement, "The US has the world’s top two universities by our reckoning — Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, neighbours on the Charles River."Times Higher Education Supplement World Rankings 2006
43. ^ Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.
44. ^ Malaysia University of Science and Technology. Retrieved on November 23, 2005.

External links

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Coordinates: 42.358940° N -71.092958° E

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Presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William Barton Rogers (1862–1870, 1879–1881) • John Daniel Runkle (1870–1878) • Francis Amasa Walker (1881–1897) • James Crafts (1897–1900) • Henry Smith Pritchett (1900–1907) • Arthur Amos Noyes (acting 1907–1909) • Richard Cockburn Maclaurin (1909–1920) • Elihu Thomson (acting 1920–1921, 1922–1923) • Ernest Fox Nichols (1921–1922) • Samuel Wesley Stratton (1923–1930) • Karl Taylor Compton (1930–1948) • James Rhyne Killian (1948–1959) • Julius Adams Stratton (1959–1966) • Howard Wesley Johnson (1966–1971) • Jerome Wiesner (1971–1980) • Paul Edward Gray (1980–1990) • Charles Marstiller Vest (1990–2004) • Susan Hockfield (2004—)

New England Football Conference
Boyd Division: Curry • Endicott • MIT • Massachusetts Dartmouth • Nichols • Plymouth State • Salve Regina • Western New England Bogan Division: Bridgewater State • Fitchburg State • Framingham State • Maine Maritime • Massachusetts Maritime • U.S. Coast Guard • Westfield State • Worcester State

Colleges and Universities in Metropolitan Boston

Babson • Bentley • Berklee College of Music • Boston Architectural Center • Boston College • Boston University • Brandeis • Curry • Eastern Nazarene • Emerson • Emmanuel • Harvard • Hellenic • Lesley • Mass. College of Art • Mass. College of Pharmacy • MIT • Mount Ida • New England Conservatory • N.E. School of Law • Northeastern • Olin • Pine Manor • Regis • School of the MFA • Simmons • Suffolk • Tufts • UMass Boston • Wellesley • Wentworth • Wheelock