50 Fun Facts About MIT

MIT is located in which city, across the Charles River from Boston?

MIT's campus is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the north bank of the Charles River; the Harvard Bridge carries Massachusetts Avenue from the campus to Boston's Back Bay.

In which year did Massachusetts' governor sign MIT's founding charter?

Governor John Andrew signed MIT's charter on 10 April 1861; the Civil War delayed everything, and the first classes met only in 1865, in Boston's Mercantile Building.

MIT's founder William Barton Rogers was a scientist in which field?

Rogers's field was geology: he directed Virginia's state geological survey and taught natural philosophy at the University of Virginia before moving to Boston in 1853.

By what informal name was MIT known in its early decades in the Back Bay?

Boston Tech was MIT's everyday name while it sat on the Back Bay's filled land; an 1859 proposal for a 'Conservatory of Art and Science' on the same land had failed.

MIT was funded in its early years under which 1862 federal law?

Under the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, Massachusetts split its land-grant proceeds, one-third to MIT and two-thirds to the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now UMass Amherst.

How many times, at least, did Harvard try to absorb MIT?

Six times, at least, Harvard tried to absorb MIT; a 1904 merger and move to Allston was approved before the state's highest court blocked the sale of MIT's Back Bay land in 1905.

The anonymous donor 'Mr Smith' behind the new riverside campus was revealed in 1920 to be whom?

George Eastman, the Kodak founder, gave anonymously as 'Mr Smith' from 1912 and was unmasked in 1920; MIT's charter crossed the Charles on a ceremonial barge called the Bucentaur.

MIT moved from Boston to its present campus across the Charles in which year?

MIT crossed the Charles in 1916, marking the move with a three-day celebration; the neoclassical 'New Technology' campus was designed by William Welles Bosworth.

What structural material did Bosworth use for MIT's Maclaurin buildings and Great Dome?

Bosworth built the Maclaurin buildings of reinforced concrete, then mostly a factory material, behind limestone-clad classical facades topped by the Pantheon-like Great Dome.

Which physicist, MIT president from 1930, reorganised it into schools and pushed basic science?

Karl Compton, president 1930-48, made Vannevar Bush his dean of engineering, split MIT into schools of science and engineering in 1932, and got it into the Association of American Universities in 1934.

The wartime 'Radiation Laboratory' at MIT was a cover name for work on what?

The Rad Lab developed microwave radar, its bland name suggesting nuclear physics instead; it grew from about 30 staff to nearly 4,000 and rivalled the Manhattan Project in scale.

By the end of World War II, MIT had received roughly how much in government R&D contracts?

MIT's wartime R&D contracts came to roughly $117 million, more than any other university, most of it channelled through the Office of Scientific Research and Development.

The famously ramshackle Building 20, thrown up for the Rad Lab, was designed to last how long?

Building 20 was meant to stand only to the end of the war yet survived until 1998; designed in a single afternoon, it became a legendary incubator that later housed Noam Chomsky's linguistics department.

MIT's off-campus Lincoln Laboratory was created in 1951 to develop what for the Air Force?

Lincoln Laboratory was set up to build a continental air-defence radar net; its SAGE system became the first large-scale computerised command-and-control network, and the lab sits at Hanscom Air Force Base in Lexington.

'Doc' Draper's MIT Instrumentation Laboratory built the computerised guidance for which space programme?

The Instrumentation Laboratory built the Apollo Guidance Computer that flew the Moon missions; its Poseidon missile work drew Vietnam-era protests, and it was spun off as the independent Draper Laboratory in 1973.

The 4 March 1969 research stoppage at MIT against military science gave birth to which organisation?

The 4 March 1969 stoppage launched the Union of Concerned Scientists; MIT afterwards ruled that on-campus research must be open and publishable, leaving classified work to Lincoln Lab.

Which main-memory technology did MIT's Whirlwind computer adopt in 1953?

Jay Forrester's team replaced Whirlwind's unreliable storage tubes with magnetic cores in 1953, making the machine far faster and more dependable; Whirlwind was also among the first computers to run in real time.

MIT's hacker culture is traced to which student group, more interested in wiring than trains?

MIT hacking grew out of the Tech Model Railroad Club, whose Signals and Power subcommittee popularised 'hack' for a clever technical feat; its members formed the nucleus of the MIT AI Laboratory, a birthplace of hacker culture.

Which MIT AI Lab programmer launched the GNU Project in 1983 and the Free Software Foundation in 1985?

Richard Stallman, then at the MIT AI Lab, announced GNU in September 1983 and founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985, reacting to colleagues leaving for commercial Lisp-machine spinoffs.

Which network authentication protocol was created for MIT's Project Athena?

Kerberos, built for Project Athena in the 1980s, lets users prove identity with tickets issued by a trusted server; the eight-year Athena partnership with IBM and DEC also produced the X Window System.

The MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by former president Jerome Wiesner and whom?

Nicholas Negroponte co-founded the Media Lab with Jerome Wiesner in 1985; its industry-sponsorship model helped lure tech firms to Kendall Square, and projects have included Lego Mindstorms and One Laptop per Child.

Which web pioneer founded the W3C at MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994?

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Web, founded the World Wide Web Consortium at the Laboratory for Computer Science in October 1994; the LCS merged with the AI Lab in 2003 to form CSAIL.

MIT OpenCourseWare, announced in 2001, set out to do what?

MIT OpenCourseWare set out to publish all course materials online free; announced in April 2001, it opened a pilot site in 2002 and by late 2007 had posted some 1,800 courses, virtually the entire curriculum.

In 2018 MIT announced a billion-dollar college of computing named after which donor?

Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone co-founder, gave $350 million toward the $1 billion MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, announced in October 2018 to weave AI research and teaching across the Institute.

Which phrase is the English rendering of MIT's Latin motto?

MIT's motto, mens et manus, means mind and hand, the Institute's ideal of pairing classroom theory with learning by doing; its seal shows a scholar with a book beside a craftsman at an anvil.

MIT's mascot, Tim the Beaver, was chosen in 1914 because beavers are what?

Alumnus Lester Gardner proposed the beaver as nature's engineers at the Technology Club of New York's January 1914 dinner, praising its engineering skill and industry; President Richard Maclaurin accepted the mascot there.

By what number do MIT students refer to Electrical Engineering and Computer Science?

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science is Course 6, with computer science alone numbered 6-3; Mechanical Engineering is Course 2 and Mathematics is Course 18.

The heavy MIT class ring worn by upperclass students and alumni is nicknamed what?

Students call the ring the Brass Rat because its bezel beaver looks rodent-like on a brass-coloured band; each class tweaks the design, and the profane initialism IHTFP sometimes sneaks in.

The four-week January term of optional classes and events between semesters is called what?

The Independent Activities Period, or IAP, fills January in MIT's 4-1-4 calendar; its offerings have included the 6.270 autonomous robot design contest and the annual Mystery Hunt.

What is the long hallway through MIT's original buildings, starting at Lobby 7, called?

Students call it the Infinite Corridor: it runs about 250 metres from Lobby 7 through the Maclaurin buildings, linking the east and west sides of campus under one roof.

The twice-yearly event when the setting sun shines straight down MIT's longest hallway is nicknamed what?

MIThenge falls around mid-November and late January, when the setting sun lines up with the corridor; the alignment is more like Newgrange than Stonehenge, since the light passes through the buildings.

One of the most famous MIT hacks, in May 1994, put what on top of the Great Dome?

The May 1994 hack put a campus police car, lights flashing, with a dummy officer and a box of doughnuts inside, atop the Great Dome; it remains among the most celebrated hacks in MIT lore.

MIT hackers once stole the cannon of which rival institution and shipped it across the country?

In 2006 MIT students posing as the 'Howe & Ser Moving Co.' hauled Caltech's Fleming Cannon from Pasadena to MIT's campus, a heist needing fund-raising, social engineering, rigging and precision machining.

The Harvard Bridge next to MIT is famously marked off in which non-standard unit of length?

The bridge measures 364.4 smoots 'plus or minus one ear', marks first painted by Lambda Chi Alpha pledges in October 1958 and renewed by the fraternity for decades afterwards.

One smoot equals the height of fraternity pledge Oliver Smoot in 1958, which was what?

Oliver Smoot stood 5 feet 7 inches; he was picked because he was the shortest pledge, making the job hardest, and because 'smoot' sounded like a scientific unit. He later chaired ANSI.

The wildly angular Stata Center, opened in 2004, was designed by which architect?

Frank Gehry designed the Stata Center; the other three also built at MIT: Pei's research towers, Saarinen's chapel and Kresge Auditorium, and Aalto's Baker House dormitory.

Which MIT mathematician coined 'cybernetics' in his 1948 book of that name?

Norbert Wiener, an MIT professor from 1919, published 'Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine' in 1948, founding the study of feedback and control systems.

How many of the twelve 1969-72 moonwalkers held MIT degrees?

Four moonwalkers held MIT degrees: Buzz Aldrin, David Scott, Edgar Mitchell and Charles Duke; Aldrin's 1963 doctorate was on manned orbital rendezvous.

MIT holds a majority of the shares in which audio equipment company founded by an alumnus and professor?

Amar Bose, an MIT alumnus and professor, gave the majority of Bose Corporation's shares, all non-voting, to MIT in 2011; the dividends fund education and research.

MIT's intercollegiate teams compete under what name?

MIT's teams are the Engineers, with Tim the Beaver as mascot; they compete mostly in NCAA Division III and field more than 30 varsity squads, one of the broadest programmes in the country.

Which MIT economist, the 1970 Nobel laureate, wrote the best-selling textbook 'Economics'?

Paul Samuelson joined MIT in 1940 and in 1970 became the first American to win the economics Nobel; his 1948 textbook 'Economics' sold millions of copies across nineteen editions.

The 1999 report by MIT female scientists led by biologist Nancy Hopkins documented what?

The report documented bias against senior women faculty in pay, lab space and influence; MIT's president conceded that reality, not perception, explained the gap, and leading universities joined MIT in 2001 in pledging equity reviews.

Under MIT's 2025 aid policy, families earning below what pay no undergraduate tuition?

From autumn 2025 MIT charges no tuition to undergraduates from families earning under $200,000, and families under $100,000 pay nothing at all for tuition, housing or meals.

Who was the first woman admitted to MIT, in 1870, and later its first female faculty member?

Ellen Swallow Richards entered MIT in 1870 as a special student in chemistry and became an instructor in sanitary chemistry in 1884; women stayed a small minority until McCormick Hall opened in 1963.

Which inventor's 1957 lecture argued MIT students should do original research from their first day?

Edwin H. Land, the Polaroid founder, gave the 1957 MIT lecture 'Generation of Greatness'; his idea became the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program in 1969 under physicist Margaret MacVicar and spread to other schools.

Under which president did MIT alone fight the 1991 Justice Department antitrust suit over financial aid?

Charles Vest, president from 1990 to 2004, took the 1991 suit to trial alone after the eight Ivies settled; MIT prevailed on appeal in 1993 and Congress then allowed limited need-based aid coordination.

Which MIT president became the very first presidential science adviser, serving Eisenhower from 1957?

James Killian, MIT's president from 1948 to 1959, became Eisenhower's science adviser after Sputnik in November 1957; MIT's Jerome Wiesner, Frank Press and Eric Lander later held the role under Kennedy, Carter and Biden.

Which public-key cryptosystem is named after the initials of three MIT researchers?

RSA takes its name from Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman, who devised the public-key cryptosystem at MIT in 1977; it went on to secure much of the web's encrypted traffic.

Which rock guitarist, founder of the band Boston, is an MIT alumnus?

Tom Scholz earned bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering at MIT and worked at Polaroid before Boston's 1976 debut album; he built much of the band's studio gear himself.

Who became MIT's eighteenth president, arriving as a cell biologist and former Duke provost?

Sally Kornbluth took office in January 2023 as MIT's eighteenth president after serving as Duke's provost; the MIT Corporation, the Institute's governing board, elects each president.