Massachusetts Institute of Technology History

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT, is a private world-leading research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1861, 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 34 academic departments and 53 interdisciplinary laboratories, centers and programs

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In 1861, The Commonwealth of 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 believed that the rapidly industrializing United States required a new type of educational institution. 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

Construction of the first MIT building was completed in Boston's Back Bay in 1866. In the following years, the Institute taught sciences and engineering and became financially troubled.[citation needed] Some people wanted it to merge with Harvard University, a more established and wealthier institution. Around 1900, a merger with Harvard was proposed, but was cancelled after protests from MIT's alumni

In 1914, a merger of MIT and Harvard's Applied Science departments was actually announced. The merger was to affect all Harvard courses in applied science and was to begin "when the Institute will occupy its splendid new buildings in Cambridge

In 1916, MIT moved across the river to its present location in Cambridge. In 1917, the arrangement with Harvard was cancelled due to State Judicial Court decision

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. Women constituted 43% of the undergraduates and 29% of the graduate students enrolled in 2005.

In 1998, MIT president Charles Vest acknowledged fairness problems cited by senior faculty in the School of Science and supported efforts toward corrective measures; a 2003 MIT news release cites various numbers suggesting that the status of women improved during the latter years of his tenure. 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

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)

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. In 2001, MIT announced that it planned to put course materials online as part of its OpenCourseWare project.

MIT was a pioneer in the use of laboratory instruction Its founding philosophy is "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;" MIT has been noted 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 (2005/2004) #1 worldwide in technology and engineering, and #2 in science. The National Research Council, in a 1995 study ranking research universities in the US, ranked MIT #1 in "reputation" and #4 in "citations and faculty awards." The Lombardi Program on Measuring University Performance has identified MIT as one of the Top 5 national research universities since it began ranking in 2000.

MIT's graduate programs in chemistry, computer science, economics, engineering, mathematics, and physics were all ranked #1 in the nation in US News and World Report's 2007 rankings. The School of Engineering has been ranked first among graduate programs since the magazine first released the results of its survey in 1988. The MIT Sloan School of Management is ranked #2 in the nation at the undergraduate level and #4 among MBA programs by US News' 2006 rankings.

According to US News' 2007 "Best Colleges" survey, MIT's overall undergraduate program is ranked #4 overall, and tied for #1 in academic reputation, in the US. The 2007 Princeton Review of college student opinions ranked MIT #1 in selectivity as well as in the top 10 for diversity and racial interactions. The Washington Monthly ranked MIT #1 in the nation in its inaugural college rankings in 2005, and again in 2006.

Culture and student life

MIT has never awarded an honorary degree; the only way to receive an MIT diploma is to earn it. 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. 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 ("I hate this fucking place," jocularly euphemized as "I have truly found paradise," "Institute has the finest professors," etc.).

A plaque of George Eastman, founder of Kodak, whose nose displays a high polish from generations of MIT students who would rub it for good luck on the way to exams.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 effect of the "formal curriculum," 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. Another minor campus uproar occured when the traditional registration day movie was replaced by Star Wars in the late 1970s.

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. A Boston Globe article asserted that MIT students "have been far more likely to kill themselves" than at eleven other comparable universities, and quoted a psychiatrist who perceived a pattern of "suicide contagion." Whether MIT's suicide rate is actually higher was strongly disputed; for example, a licensed social worker writing in the Psychiatric Times noted that "MIT's suicide rate is below the national average if one adjusts figures for the school's overwhelmingly male student body." In late 2001 an MIT task force recommended improvements in mental health services. Chancellor Philip L. Clay announced that MIT would implement the recommendations, including expanding staff and operating hours at the mental health center.

Blizzard of '78, Kresge OvalMIT has a student athletics program offering 41 varsity-level sports . The Institute's sports teams are called the Engineers, their mascot since 1914 being a beaver, "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. MIT teams have won or placed highly in national championships in pistol, track and field, cross country, crew, fencing, 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. The MIT Symphony appeared on a classical record label conducted by David Epstein in the 1970s. It was a tradition for the LSC lecture series committee to show 35mm movies in the 1970s, which often came with the enthusiastic cheer "LSC .... sucks", sometimes heard in other Boston area theaters. They brought many prominent speakers and artists, including Gary Larson, Weird Al Yankovic, and former defence secretary Robert McNamara. When the campus was closed for the Blizzard of 1978, students constructed a giant dragon on the Kresge oval, along with R2-D2 and C3-P0 nearby, and helped nearby stranded motorists.

Undergraduate housing

MIT guarantees four-year dormitory housing for all undergraduates, 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 on and east of Massachusetts Avenue are stereotypically more involved in countercultural activities. Older dormitories such as Bexley Hall and East Campus permit students wide leeway in decoration, which has included in some cases, wallpaper, bars, a completely black hallway, and in-wall aquariums.

Many upperclassmen choose to live in fraternities, sororities, and independent living groups, 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

Brass Rat

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 and freshmen retention rate at MIT are similar to schools of similar calibre .

Although students are assigned letter grades in their first semester, their transcripts report only that they passed, if they did. 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.

In a practice that confounds most outsiders, MIT undergraduates refer to both their majors and classes using numbers alone. Majors are numbered with Roman numerals in the approximate order of when the department was founded; for example, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) is Course VI, while Nuclear Science & Engineering is Course XXII. Thus, students majoring in EECS identify themselves as "Course 6." 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."

For brevity, course number designations are pronounced without the decimal point and by replacing "oh" for zero (unless zero is the last number). Thus, the above course at MIT would be pronounced "eight oh one," and the course "7.20" would be pronounced "seven twenty." For more information on naming and pronunciation conventions around campus, see here. For a list of course numbers,

Course requirements

MIT has a core undergraduate curriculum comprised of science, writing/communication, HASS (Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences), Institute laboratory, and physical education requirements that is collectively called the General Institute Requirements, or GIRs. The science requirement, generally completed during freshman year as they are prerequisites for many introductory science and engineering classes, is comprised of two semesters of physics classes covering kinematics and E&M, two semesters of math covering single variable calculus and multivariable calculus, one semester of chemistry, and one semester of biology. The classes that fulfill the science requirement are stratifed and offer alternative courses that allow students to pursue more complex or difficult topics than are covered in the general class. Every department offers a laboratory subject requiring substantial hands-on experimentation and written analysis to fulfill the Institute lab requirement.

The writing/communication is intended to foster competency in expository writing, speaking, and the "forms of discourse common to their professional fields" through a two-tiered system of general HASS classes (CI-H) and major-specific (CI-M) classes. The HASS requirement, comprised of eight semester-long classes, is intended to ground a student's technical competency with a broader awareness of "human society, its traditions, and its institutions." Students are both required to take a distribution of four unrelated HASS classes while also selecting a concentration of at least three related HASS classes. Among undergraduates, the HASS and communication requirements are notoriously difficult to understand as some classes arbitrarily fulfill both requirements while seemingly analogous classes fulfill neither. In the spring of 2005, a student-operated advisory committee empaneled to review the GIRs stressed the need to simplify the HASS system in particular.

In May 2006 a faculty task force recommended that the current GIR system be modified on several counts. While the required two semesters of math and first semester of physics would remain, the science core would be replaced by a "Science-Math-Engineering" core that would allow students to pick five classes from six categories of math, physics, chemistry, life sciences, computation, and engineering, and a "project-based freshman experience." The Institute lab requirement would also be dropped and the HASS requirement addressing a "big idea."

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 and, less often, professors, lead recitation sections to explore fuller details, or often to provide students help on homework problems. Problem sets (colloquially known as "p-sets"), 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") . 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]

While there is no official premedical curriculum, roughly 10% of each undergraduate class applies to medical school following their undergraduate work at MIT.

Graduate academics

Unlike most colleges and universities around the world, MIT graduate students outnumber its undergraduates (60% of the student body are graduate students ). MIT graduate students can work towards Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D), 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

Killian Court and The Great DomeMIT'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 , 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

Building 10 at NightMIT 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 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.

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 building 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

Frieze on Building 2 dedicated to NewtonOne 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 ranging from the classic to Gehry, which many accuse of lacking elegance. Most are connected above ground as well as below, which requires some arithmetic to determine at what floor on will arrive at after leaving one building.

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.

Entrance on 77 Massachusetts AvenueThe 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

MIT's Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence SciencesA major building effort has been underway for several years in the wake of a $2 billion development campaign. Simmons Hall (designed by Steven Holl), built in response to the freshmen-on-campus Krueger settlement stipulation, opened in 2002. The Zesiger sports and fitness center, featuring an olympic-class swimming pool, also opened in 2002. Building 46 (designed by Charles Correa) which houses the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, the Department of Brain and Cognitive Science, and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research opened in November 2005. The Broad Institute opened its new headquarters in May 2006.

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, "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. A 2005 college guide 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!"