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84-669: Often specific to one institution, titles such as "president's professor", "university professor", "distinguished professor", "distinguished research professor", "distinguished teaching professor", "distinguished university professor", or "regents professor" are granted to a small percentage of the top tenured faculty who are regarded as particularly important in their respective fields of research. Some institutions grant more university-specific, formal titles such as M.I.T. 's " Institute Professor ", Yale University 's " Sterling Professor ", or Duke University 's " James B. Duke Professor ". Some academic and/or scholarly organizations may also bestow

168-442: A towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs, and previously Alcator C-Mod , which was the largest fusion device operated by any university. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9.4 × 10 ^  sq ft (870,000 m ) of campus. The campus' primary energy source is natural gas. In connection with capital campaigns to expand

252-401: A "technological" research university and to build more autonomy from private industry. In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost ) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of

336-587: A 35-car train carrying gravel and other fill arrived every 45 minutes, day and night. When the Needham gravel pits were exhausted, additional fill was found in Canton, Dedham, Hyde Park, and Westwood. William Dean Howells recalled "the beginnings of Commonwealth Avenue, and the other streets of the Back Bay, laid out with their basements left hollowed in the made land, which the gravel trains were yet making out of

420-600: A dense high-rise transit-oriented development plan. The MIT Museum has moved immediately adjacent to a Kendall Square subway entrance, joining the List Visual Arts Center on the eastern end of the campus. Each building at MIT has a number (possibly preceded by a W , N , E , or NW ) designation, and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to

504-564: A desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard and move to Allston, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. The merger plan collapsed in 1905 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that MIT could not sell its Back Bay land. In 1912, MIT acquired its current campus by purchasing

588-676: A first for a non-industrial – much less university – building in the US. Bosworth's design was influenced by the City Beautiful Movement of the early 1900s and features the Pantheon -esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where graduation ceremonies are held each year. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with

672-534: A mile along the north side of the Charles River basin. 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/MIT MBTA Red Line station

756-488: A modest fee. The " edX " online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous "Harvardx" initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the MIT faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online. MIT has its own police force. Three days after

840-496: A new Schwarzman College of Computing dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman . The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $ 1 billion upon completion. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)

924-678: A one-mile (1.6 km) tract of filled lands along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical "New Technology" campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious "Mr. Smith", starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman , an inventor of film production methods and founder of Eastman Kodak . Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $ 20 million ($ 304.2 million in 2024 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT. In 1916, with

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1008-405: A polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws. The Rogers Plan reflected

1092-421: A special type of educational institution which can be defined as a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts. We might call it a university limited in its objectives but unlimited in the breadth and the thoroughness with which it pursues these objectives. —MIT president James Rhyne Killian These activities affected MIT profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of "any great slackening in

1176-543: Is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts , United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and science . Founded in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States , MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering . MIT

1260-497: Is a large, highly residential, research university with a majority of enrollments in graduate and professional programs. The university has been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges 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

1344-692: Is also considered a fashionable shopping destination (especially Newbury and Boylston Streets , and the adjacent Prudential Center and Copley Place malls) and home to several major hotels. The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay considers the neighborhood's bounds to be " Charles River on the North; Arlington Street to Park Square on the East; Columbus Avenue to the New York New Haven and Hartford right-of-way (South of Stuart Street and Copley Place ), Huntington Avenue , Dalton Street, and

1428-430: Is an officially recognized neighborhood of Boston , Massachusetts , built on reclaimed land in the Charles River basin. Construction began in 1859, as the demand for luxury housing exceeded the availability in the city at the time, and the area was fully built by around 1900. It is most famous for its rows of Victorian brownstone homes—considered one of the best preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in

1512-645: Is listed on the National Register of Historic Places , and is considered one of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban architecture in the United States. In 1966, the Massachusetts Legislature, "to safeguard the heritage of the city of Boston by preventing the despoliation" of the Back Bay, created the Back Bay Architectural District to regulate exterior changes to Back Bay buildings. Since

1596-593: Is located on the northeastern edge of the campus, in Kendall Square . The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings, as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods. In early 2016, MIT presented its updated Kendall Square Initiative to the City of Cambridge, with plans for mixed-use educational, retail, residential, startup incubator, and office space in

1680-617: Is one of three private land-grant universities in the United States, the others being Cornell University and Tuskegee University . The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River , and operates off-campus facilities including the MIT Lincoln Laboratory , the Bates Center, and the Haystack Observatory , as well as affiliated laboratories such as

1764-459: Is the largest research facility of its kind in the nation. With a cost of US$ 400 million, it is also one of the costliest buildings on campus. The facility also provides state-of-the-art nanoimaging capabilities with vibration damped imaging and metrology suites sitting atop a 5 × 10 ^  lb (2,300,000 kg) slab of concrete underground. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel for testing aerodynamic research,

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1848-470: Is the largest taxpayer in the city, contributing approximately 14% of the city's annual revenues. Holdings include Technology Square , parts of Kendall Square , University Park , and many properties in Cambridgeport and Area 4 neighboring the main campus. The land is held for investment purposes and potential long-term expansion. MIT's School of Architecture , founded in 1865 and now called

1932-403: Is widely conceived as basically a vocational school", a "partly unjustified" perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and

2016-580: The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture. 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

2100-547: The Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev , setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier's memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the MIT community with thousands of police officers from

2184-479: The Broad and Whitehead Institutes . As of October 2024 , 105 Nobel laureates , 26 Turing Award winners, and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with MIT as alumni, faculty members, or researchers. In addition, 58 National Medal of Science recipients, 29 National Medals of Technology and Innovation recipients, 50 MacArthur Fellows , 83 Marshall Scholars , 41 astronauts , 16 Chief Scientists of

2268-699: The Charles River Dam in 1910 converted the former Charles estuary into a freshwater basin; the Charles River Esplanade was constructed to allow residents to enjoy the view of the new lagoon. The Esplanade has since undergone several changes, including the construction of Storrow Drive . The Back Bay is traversed by five east–west corridors: Beacon Street , Marlborough Street, Commonwealth Avenue , Newbury Street and Boylston Street . These are interrupted at regular intervals by north–south streets named alphabetically: Arlington (along

2352-587: The German research university model , emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories. Two days after MIT was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT's first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of

2436-508: The MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering . Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under

2520-683: The Massachusetts Turnpike on the South; Charlesgate East on the West." Before its transformation into buildable land by a 19th-century filling project, the Back Bay was a bay, west of the Shawmut Peninsula (on the far side from Boston Harbor ) between Boston and Cambridge , the Charles River entering from the west. This bay was tidal: the water rose and fell several feet over the course of each day, and at low tide much of

2604-700: The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes" and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College , which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst . In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in

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2688-554: The One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005. MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand

2772-546: The governor of Massachusetts , on April 10, 1861. Rogers, who was educated at the College of William & Mary and later held professorships at both William & Mary and the University of Virginia , wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a professional school , but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education , proposing that: The true and only practicable object of

2856-467: The "Technology Plan" in 1920. As MIT grew under the Tech Plan, it built new postgraduate programs that stressed laboratory work on industry problems, including a new program in electrical engineering. Gerard Swope , MIT's chairman and head of General Electric , believed talented engineers needed scientific research training. In 1930, he recruited Karl Taylor Compton to helm MIT's transformation as

2940-579: The 1960s, the concept of a High Spine has influenced large-project development in Boston, reinforced by zoning rules permitting high-rise construction along the axis of the Massachusetts Turnpike , including air rights siting of buildings. Copley Square features Trinity Church , the Boston Public Library , the John Hancock Tower , and numerous other notable buildings. Prominent cultural and educational institutions in

3024-510: The 1980s, there was more controversy at MIT over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, MIT's research for the military has included work on robots, drones and 'battle suits'. MIT has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC ,

3108-742: 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 2,000 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002; and

3192-500: The Back Bay. MIT was informally called "Boston Tech". The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker . Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and

3276-568: The Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus " starchitecture ". These buildings have not always been well received; in 2010, The Princeton Review 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 11 undergraduate dormitories. Those living on campus can receive support and mentoring from live-in graduate student tutors, resident advisors, and faculty housemasters. Because housing assignments are made based on

3360-611: The Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering". Unlike Ivy League schools, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934. Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at MIT that "the Institute

3444-514: The LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish , and MIT physicist Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017. Weiss, who is also an MIT graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO. In April of 2024, MIT students joined other campuses across

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3528-528: The MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo), a subsidiary of the MIT Corporation created in 2004. A minor revenue source for much of the Institute's history, the endowment's role in MIT operations has grown due to strong investment returns since the 1990s, making it one the largest endowments held by American universities . Among its holdings are a majority of shares in the audio equipment manufacturer Bose Corporation . MIT

3612-628: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Acts of 1861, Chapter 183 In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay , Boston for a " Conservatory of Art and Science ", but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers , was signed by John Albion Andrew ,

3696-638: The Media Lab, the Sloan School's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption . In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements , MIT launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets , syllabi, exams, and lectures from

3780-535: The New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, MIT announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to "an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of the MIT community and in all aspects of his life". The announcement further stated that "Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed

3864-523: The School of Architecture and Planning, was the first formal architecture program in the United States, and it has a history of commissioning progressive buildings. The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are sometimes called the "Maclaurin buildings" after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth , these imposing buildings were built of reinforced concrete ,

3948-538: The US Air Force , and 1 foreign head of state have been affiliated with MIT. The institute also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and MIT alumni have founded or co-founded many notable companies. MIT is a member of the Association of American Universities . [...] a school of industrial science aiding the advancement, development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce [...] Act to Incorporate

4032-643: The United States in protests and setting up encampments against the Israel–Hamas war . Student likened their actions to the historic protests against the American invasion of  Vietnam and MIT investment’s in South African apartheid ; they called for ending ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense . MIT's 166-acre (67.2 ha) campus in the city of Cambridge spans approximately

4116-465: The United States—as well as numerous architecturally significant individual buildings, and cultural institutions such as the Boston Public Library , and Boston Architectural College . Initially conceived as a residential-only area, commercial buildings were permitted from around 1890, and Back Bay now features many office buildings, including the John Hancock Tower , Boston's tallest skyscraper. It

4200-545: The adjacent Fenway neighborhood with Ipswich, Jersey, and Kilmarnock Streets. West of Hereford are Massachusetts Avenue (a regional thoroughfare crossing the Harvard Bridge to Cambridge and far beyond) and Charlesgate , which forms the Back Bay's western boundary. Setback requirements and other restrictions, written into the lot deeds of the newly filled Back Bay, produced harmonious rows of dignified three- to five-story residential brownstones (though most along Newbury Street are now in commercial or mixed use). The Back Bay

4284-408: The arts and sciences. In 2010, it was dubbed "most selective" by U.S. News , admitting few transfer students and 4.1% of its applicants in the 2020–2021 admissions cycle. It is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. MIT offers 44 undergraduate degrees across its five schools. In the 2017–2018 academic year, 1,045 Bachelor of Science degrees (abbreviated " SB ") were granted,

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4368-466: The bay's bed was exposed as a marshy flat. As early as 5,200 years before present, Native Americans built fish weirs here, evidence of which was discovered during subway construction in 1913 ( see Ancient Fishweir Project and Boylston Street Fishweir ). In 1814, the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation was chartered to construct a milldam , which would also serve as a toll road connecting Boston to Watertown , bypassing Boston Neck . The dam prevented

4452-540: The boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness". In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $ 240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open

4536-734: The budget, new programs, degrees and faculty appointments, and elects a president to manage the university and preside over the Institute's faculty. The current president is Sally Kornbluth , a cell biologist and former provost at Duke University , who became MIT's eighteenth president in January 2023. MIT has five schools ( Science , Engineering , Architecture and Planning , Management , and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences ) and one college ( Schwarzman College of Computing ), but no schools of law or medicine. While faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs,

4620-636: 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 , constructing solar power offsets , and building a cogeneration plant to power campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements. MIT has substantial commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge on which it pays property taxes , plus an additional voluntary payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) on academic buildings which are legally tax-exempt. As of 2017 , it

4704-549: 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 in the 2000s included expansions of

4788-551: 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. Academic departments are also evaluated by "Visiting Committees," specialized bodies of Corporation members and outside experts who review the performance, activities, and needs of each department. MIT's endowment , real estate, and other financial assets are managed through by

4872-491: The country gathered at MIT's Radiation Laboratory , established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar . The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope -based and other complex control systems for gunsight , bombsight , and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper 's Instrumentation Laboratory ;

4956-691: 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 became the nation's largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $ 100 million ($ 1.2 billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo . ...

5040-500: The development of major projects in the area. The plan of Back Bay, by Arthur Gilman of the firm Gridley James Fox Bryant , was greatly influenced by Haussmann's renovation of Paris . It featured wide, parallel, tree-lined avenues unlike anything seen in other Boston neighborhoods. Five east–west corridors— Beacon Street (closest to the Charles), Marlborough Street, Commonwealth Avenue (actually two one-way thoroughfares flanking

5124-553: The dormitory system starting in 2002. Because FSILGs had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy could not be implemented until Simmons Hall opened in that year. In 2013–2014, MIT abruptly closed and then demolished undergrad dorm Bexley Hall, citing extensive water damage that made repairs infeasible. In 2017, MIT shut down Senior House after a century of service as an undergrad dorm. That year, MIT administrators released data showing just 60% of Senior House residents had graduated in four years. Campus-wide,

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5208-560: The expanding university. By the 1950s, MIT no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government. In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research. In this period MIT's various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for

5292-474: The first academic buildings complete, the MIT administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion. Institute faculty continued to debate whether the Institute education should continue to emphasize "hands on" industrial training or scientific research. Needing funds to match Eastman's gift and cover retreating state support, President Richard MacLaurin launched an industry funding model known as

5376-548: The four-year graduation rate is 84% (the cumulative graduation rate is significantly higher). MIT is a publicly-chartered nonprofit corporation governed by a privately appointed board known as the MIT Corporation . A large board since MIT's founding, the Corporation has 60–80 members at any time, some with fixed terms, some with life appointments, and eight who serve ex officio . The Corporation approves

5460-641: The great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, MIT announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its "MITx" program, for

5544-548: The men participated in fraternities and 20% of the women were involved in sororities. Most FSILGs are located across the river in Back Bay near where MIT was founded, and there is also a cluster of fraternities on MIT's West Campus that face the Charles River Basin. After the 1997 alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger, a new pledge at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in

5628-446: The most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course 6". MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; for instance, the introductory calculus-based classical mechanics course is simply "8.01" (pronounced eight-oh-one ) at MIT. The four-year, full-time undergraduate program maintains a balance between professional majors and those in

5712-439: The most powerful university-based nuclear reactors 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. MIT Nano, also known as Building 12, is an interdisciplinary facility for nanoscale research. Its 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m ) cleanroom and research space, visible through expansive glass facades,

5796-702: The names of important scientists and philosophers. The spacious Building 7 atrium at 77 Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus. Alvar Aalto 's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen 's MIT Chapel and Kresge 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), and Fumihiko Maki 's Media Lab Extension (2009) stand out among

5880-466: The natural tides from flushing sewage out to sea, creating severe sanitary and odor problems. With costs higher and power lower than expected, in the end, the project was an economic failure, and in 1857 a massive project was begun to "make land" by filling the area enclosed by the dam. The firm of Goss and Munson extended railroad lines to quarries in Needham, Massachusetts , 9 miles (14 km) away;

5964-797: The only type of undergraduate degree MIT now awards. In the 2011 fall term, among students who had designated a major, the School of Engineering was the most popular division, enrolling 63% of students in its 19 degree programs, followed by the School of Science (29%), School of Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences (3.7%), Sloan School of Management (3.3%), and School of Architecture and Planning (2%). The largest undergraduate degree programs were in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science ( Course 6–2 ), Computer Science and Engineering ( Course 6–3 ), Mechanical Engineering ( Course 2 ), Physics ( Course 8 ), and Mathematics ( Course 18 ). Back Bay, Boston, Massachusetts Back Bay

6048-399: The order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original center cluster of Maclaurin buildings. Many of the buildings are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking . MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is one of

6132-556: The pace of life at the Institute" to match the return to peacetime, remembering the "academic tranquility of the prewar years", though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the presidential terms of Karl Taylor Compton (1930–1948), James Rhyne Killian (1948–1957), and chancellor Julius Adams Stratton (1952–1957), whose institution-building strategies shaped

6216-905: The preferences of the students themselves, diverse social atmospheres can be sustained in different living groups; for example, according to the Yale Daily News staff's The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010 , "The split between East Campus and West Campus is a significant characteristic of MIT. East Campus has gained a reputation as a thriving counterculture." MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families. MIT has an active Greek and co-op housing system, including thirty-six fraternities , sororities , and independent living groups ( FSILGs ). As of 2015 , 98% of all undergraduates lived in MIT-affiliated housing; 54% of

6300-637: The protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to "greater strength and unity" after these times of turmoil. However six MIT students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas , are still indignant about MIT's role in military research and its suppression of these protests. ( Richard Leacock 's film, November Actions , records some of these tumultuous events. ) In

6384-674: The size of the student body increased to more than one thousand. The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these "Boston Tech" years, MIT faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president (and former MIT faculty) Charles W. Eliot 's repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School . There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving

6468-451: The spring semester commencing in early February and ceasing in late May. MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers or acronyms alone. Departments and their corresponding majors are numbered in the approximate order of their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course 1 , while Linguistics and Philosophy is Course 24 . Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS),

6552-427: The successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980. MIT's involvement in military science surged during World War II . In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across

6636-603: The title "distinguished professor" in recognition of achievement over the course of an academic career. For example, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture annually recognizes up to five faculty members at architecture schools in the United States and Canada with the ACSA Distinguished Professor Award. This science article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT )

6720-473: The tree-lined pedestrian Commonwealth Avenue Mall), Newbury Street and Boylston Street —are intersected at regular intervals by north–south cross streets: Arlington (along the western edge of the Public Garden ), Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, and Hereford. An 1874 guidebook noted the trisyllabic-disyllabic alternation of that alphabetic sequence; the series continues in

6804-588: The war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. 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 toward environmental and social problems. MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to

6888-481: The western border of the Boston Public Garden ), Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester and Hereford Streets. All of the west–east streets, except Commonwealth Avenue, are one-way streets. In the 1960s, the " High Spine " design plan, in conjunction with development plans, gave way to the construction of high-rise buildings along the Massachusetts Turnpike , which in turn allowed

6972-483: The westward hills." Present-day Back Bay itself was filled by 1882; the project reached existing land at what is now Kenmore Square in 1890, and finished in the Fens in 1900. Much of the old mill dam remains buried under present-day Beacon Street. The project was the largest of a number of land reclamation projects which, beginning in 1820, more than doubled the size of the original Shawmut Peninsula. Completion of

7056-514: Was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology , MIT, and industrial contractors, and funded by the National Science Foundation . It was designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of gravitational waves predicted by general relativity . Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to

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