50 Fun Facts About MIT

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

The campus stretches for about a mile along the river; the Harvard Bridge links it to Boston's Back Bay.

MIT's charter was signed in April of which year, two days before the Civil War began?

The war delayed everything, and the first classes were not held until 1865, in Boston's Mercantile Building.

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

He had come to Boston from the University of Virginia and wanted a school modelled on the German polytechnics.

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

The 1859 proposal for a 'Conservatory of Art and Science' on the same filled land had failed.

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

The same act created the Massachusetts Agricultural College, now UMass Amherst.

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

A merger and move to Allston was actually approved before the state supreme 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?

The Kodak founder's gifts began in 1912; the charter crossed the river in 1916 on a ceremonial barge called the Bucentaur.

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

The neoclassical 'New Technology' campus was designed by William Welles Bosworth.

Bosworth's 1916 buildings were the first non-industrial American buildings made of what?

His formula was industrial efficiency inside, classical looks outside, topped by the Pantheon-like Great Dome.

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

He made Vannevar Bush his dean of engineering, centralised industry contracts and got MIT into the Association of American Universities.

The wartime 'Radiation Laboratory' at MIT was named to conceal what it actually worked on. What was that?

It grew from 30 staff to about 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?

That was about a third of all NDRC spending on university research.

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

It was designed in a single day and became a legendary incubator of research, later housing Noam Chomsky's linguistics department.

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

Its first project, SAGE, was the first large-scale computerised command-and-control network; the lab sits at Hanscom Air Force Base in Lexington.

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

Its work on Poseidon missile warheads 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?

MIT then ruled that on-campus research must be open and publishable, consolidating classified work at Lincoln Lab.

The Whirlwind computer, operational at MIT in 1951, was the second machine to store data using what?

Jay Forrester led the project; Whirlwind was among the first computers to operate in real time.

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

Its members formed the nucleus of the AI Laboratory, regarded as the birthplace of hacker culture.

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

He was reacting to colleagues being pulled into commercial spinoffs in the early 1980s.

Which authentication protocol, named after a mythical three-headed dog, came from MIT's Project Athena?

The eight-year partnership with IBM and DEC also gave the world the X Window System.

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

Its industry-sponsorship model helped lure tech firms to Kendall Square; 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?

The LCS merged with the AI Lab in 2003 to form CSAIL, now MIT's largest research laboratory.

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

The 2002 pilot offered 32 courses under a Creative Commons licence; the idea drew on open-source principles from the AI Lab.

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

The Schwarzman College of Computing aims to weave AI research and teaching across the whole Institute.

MIT's motto 'mens et manus' translates as what?

It compresses the Institute's ideal of balancing classroom time with learning by doing.

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

President Richard Maclaurin proposed it at the Technology Club of New York's dinner.

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

Computer Science and Engineering is Course 6-3; Mechanical Engineering is Course 2 and Mathematics Course 18.

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

Its bezel bears a beaver, and the design changes slightly each year; the profane initialism IHTFP sometimes sneaks on.

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

MIT runs a 4-1-4 calendar; popular IAP offerings include the autonomous robot design contest.

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

Twice a year the setting sun aligns with it, an event students call MIThenge.

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

The alignment is technically 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?

Its lights were flashing; the car was later semi-permanently reinstalled inside the Stata Center as a classic.

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

The 2006 heist by the fake 'Howe & Ser Moving Co.' needed 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 of them 'plus or minus one ear'.

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

He was picked because he was the shortest pledge, making the job hardest, and had 'the most scientifically named' surname.

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

The others also built on campus: Pei's four research towers, Saarinen's chapel and Kresge Auditorium, Aalto's Baker House.

As of October 2024, roughly how many Nobel laureates had been affiliated with MIT?

Plus 26 Turing Award winners and 8 Fields Medallists.

Of the twelve people who have walked on the Moon, how many graduated from MIT?

Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin is the best known.

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

The endowment also owns much of Kendall Square's commercial real estate.

MIT's intercollegiate teams compete under what name?

They have won 22 team national championships and 42 individual ones.

MIT's campus reactor is one of only three US university reactors running above what power?

Students can train as reactor operators, and it was historically used for experimental cancer treatment.

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

President Charles Vest admitted the bias was 'far more reality than perception', and nine other universities launched similar reviews.

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

Most graduate students are funded through research; MIT alone contested a 1991 antitrust suit over coordinated financial aid and won.

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

She specialised in sanitary chemistry; 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?

The instant-photography pioneer's idea became UROP 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?

The eight Ivies settled; MIT won on appeal in 1993 and Congress then allowed need-based aid coordination.

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

Jerome Wiesner, Frank Press and Eric Lander later held the role under Kennedy, Carter and Biden.

How many Turing Award winners had been affiliated with MIT as of October 2024?

Eight Fields Medalists and 105 Nobel laureates round out the tally of alumni, faculty and researchers.

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

Other unexpected alumni include Doctor Dolittle author Hugh Lofting and Lincoln Memorial sculptor Daniel Chester French.

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

MIT is governed by the MIT Corporation, a 60-to-80-member board that elects the president.