Massachusetts Institute of Technology

In 1860 William Barton Rogers, who became the founding president, and his allies petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for “an Act of Incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” The state allocated land in Boston’s Back Bay on the condition that the institution remain open to the public. The charter was granted on April 10, 1861, on the eve of the Civil War.⁠[1]

MIT Facts describes Rogers as a natural scientist who made an extended effort to establish a new kind of independent institution suited to an industrializing America; he stressed practical application, held that professional competence is best fostered by “coupling teaching and research” and by focusing attention on real-world problems, and pioneered the teaching laboratory. The Institute describes itself as independent, coeducational and privately endowed, and states that nearly 65 percent of undergraduates take part in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program each year and that roughly half of graduating seniors report an international experience.⁠[2]

MIT’s motto is “Mens et manus” (“mind and hand”).⁠[3]

William Barton Rogers served as president from 1862 to 1870 and again from 1879 to 1881; John Daniel Runkle held the office between his two terms (1870–1878).⁠[4]

In 1863 Congress passed the Morrill Land Grant Act, which allowed states to sell up to 30,000 acres of public land per congressman and senator. Massachusetts used part of the funds to create the Massachusetts Agricultural College (today the University of Massachusetts Amherst), and the remainder went to MIT.⁠[1]

The Civil War delayed classes until 1865. MIT Facts states that the Institute admitted its first students in 1865, four years after its founding charter was approved.⁠[1][2]

The first international student was admitted to MIT in 1866.⁠[1]

In 1869 Charles W. Eliot, then a professor at MIT, published “The New Education.”⁠[1]

MIT pages give different years for the admission and graduation of Ellen Swallow Richards, MIT’s first woman student. An MIT Libraries exhibit page states that in 1870 she became the first woman admitted to MIT, as a non-matriculated “special student” in chemistry, and that she completed an SB in chemistry in 1873; a 2020 MIT Technology Review article writes that, after graduating from Vassar College in 1870, she was admitted to MIT in January 1871 to study chemistry, the Institute considering her a special case, and in 1873 became the first woman to graduate from MIT; MIT Facts states that the Institute admitted its first woman student in 1871; the MIT Admissions history page states that she graduated from MIT in 1870 and calls her the first woman in the United States to earn a degree in STEM.⁠[5][6][2][1]

The MIT Libraries exhibit page states that in 1884, after seven years of unpaid work at MIT, Richards became the first woman on MIT’s faculty, and that she worked as an instructor in sanitary chemistry until her death in 1911. The MIT Technology Review article writes that she was placed on MIT’s payroll in 1884 at an annual salary of $1,000, and that in 1900 she helped found the MIT Women’s Association and became its first president; the association became the Association of MIT Alumnae (AMITA) in 1964.⁠[5][6]

The MIT Technology Review article writes that in the winter of 1876, when many women applied for the Lowell lectures, MIT chemistry professors took eight of them into their private laboratories free of charge; the opening of the Women’s Laboratory was officially announced on October 5, 1876, and it welcomed its first class of 23 students on October 23. The laboratory closed in 1883, when its annex was torn down, having served 102 women. On September 29, 1883, the MIT Corporation voted to admit students to the chemistry laboratories of the new Walker Building “without distinction of sex.” In 1878 Bessie Capen and a classmate became the third and fourth women to earn MIT bachelor’s degrees.⁠[6]

The MIT Libraries exhibit page states that Richards founded the Woman’s Laboratory at MIT in 1876.⁠[5]

Francis Amasa Walker was president from 1881 to 1897, followed by James Mason Crafts (1897–1900) and Henry Smith Pritchett (1900–1907).⁠[4]

In 1888 Robert Robinson Taylor, the son of a freed slave, integrated MIT; he later became America’s first accredited Black architect.⁠[1]

Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, a native of Scotland, began his presidency in 1909 and served until 1920; the MIT Admissions history page writes that under him one in 15 MIT students came from a foreign country.⁠[1][4]

By the early 1900s MIT had run out of room on its Back Bay campus. Its first building was in Boston, and in 1916 it moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the left bank of the Charles River, into its current campus, which was designed and built by alumni. The “About MIT” page lists a campus of 168 acres (0.68 square kilometers) with 20 student residences, 26 acres (0.11 square kilometers) of playing fields, more than 40 gardens and green spaces and more than 60 publicly sited works of art.⁠[1][3]

During World War I, MIT became a military training ground, hosting the first Army-ROTC program and the first ground school for Navy pilots; a footnote on the page states that more MIT alumni served as commissioned officers in World War I than alumni of any other school besides West Point.⁠[1]

Ernest Fox Nichols was president in 1921–1922, Samuel Wesley Stratton from 1923 to 1930 and Karl Taylor Compton from 1930 to 1948.⁠[4]

The MIT Radiation Laboratory sprang to life on the MIT campus in the fall of 1940; by December 1940 a primitive two-parabola radar system was under test on the roof of Building 6. Its director was Lee DuBridge, a nuclear physicist from the University of Rochester, and its associate director was Isidor I. Rabi, then in the physics department of Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University, formally Columbia University in the City of New York, is a private research university in New York City and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1754 by royal charter from King George II as King's College, it is the oldest institution of higher education in New York State and the fifth oldest in the United States. It was renamed Columbia College in 1784 and adopted the university name and moved to Manhattan's Morningside Heights in 1896. It has 17 schools and four affiliated colleges, with 35,978 students enrolled in fall 2025. Legal scholar Jennifer L. Mnookin became president on July 1, 2026.Open the full entry. The “History” page of Lincoln Laboratory states that the Radiation Laboratory was formed out of MIT’s Physics Department during World War II to develop radar for the Allied war effort, in collaboration with scientists from Great Britain.⁠[7][8]

The “MIT Radiation Laboratory” page states that at its peak in 1945 the laboratory employed 3,500 people and spent close to $4 million a month (the Lincoln Laboratory “History” page gives a peak staff of 4000); it developed more than 100 radar systems, and its designs supported $1.5 billion of radar production in industry, including airborne bombing radars, shipboard search radars, the long-range navigation (LORAN) system and microwave early-warning (MEW) radars, which the page says effectively nullified the V-1 threat to London. The page writes that air-to-surface vessel (ASV) radar helped turn back the U-boat threat: U-boats sank 117 Allied ships in November 1942, whereas in September–October 1943 only nine Allied ships were sunk and 25 U-boats were destroyed by ASV-equipped aircraft. Karl Taylor Compton called it “the greatest cooperative research establishment in the history of the world.” The laboratory closed on December 31, 1945, and most of its staff returned to academia.⁠[7][8]

During World War II and the Cold War, federal funding for basic research drove MIT’s rapid growth, and a committee led by Professor Warren K. Lewis was created on “the foundations of the MIT education”; Lewis’s report recommended “the establishment of a new school of humanistic and social sciences at MIT.”⁠[1]

James Rhyne Killian, Jr. was president from 1948 to 1958, Julius Adams Stratton from 1959 to 1966 and Howard Wesley Johnson from 1966 to 1971.⁠[4]

After the first Soviet atomic bomb exploded in August 1949, the Department of DefenseU.S. Department of DefenseThe U.S. Department of Defense is an executive department of the United States federal government, formed in 1949 from the National Military Establishment created in 1947 and headquartered at the Pentagon. The department’s website describes it as America’s oldest and largest government agency.Open the full entry commissioned MIT to take a leading role in addressing the threat. The “History” page of MIT Lincoln Laboratory states that the laboratory was established in 1951 to build the nation’s first air defense system; the “MIT Radiation Laboratory” page on the same website states that Lincoln Laboratory was founded in 1952, seven years after the Radiation Laboratory closed, and that much of its organizational and project-management approach and many of its first employees came from the Radiation Laboratory.⁠[8][7]

The laboratory’s first project was the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE), which became fully operational in 1963 with 24 direction centers and three combat centers and operated until 1983.⁠[8]

Lincoln Laboratory, in Lexington, Massachusetts, is an MIT laboratory and a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) that develops advanced technology for national security; the U.S. Department of Defense provides 90 percent of its funding. In fiscal year 2025 (October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025) it had about 4,500 MIT employees and 475 subcontracted personnel; its funding that year by mission area was 20 percent air, missile and maritime defense technology, 18 percent space systems and technology, 18 percent communication systems, 10 percent advanced technology, 7 percent each tactical systems and biotechnology and human systems, 6 percent cybersecurity and information sciences, 5 percent homeland protection, 4 percent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and technology, 3 percent the advanced research portfolio and 2 percent air traffic control.⁠[9]

Jerome Bert Wiesner was president from 1971 to 1980, Paul Edward Gray from 1980 to 1990 and Charles Marstiller Vest from 1990 to 2004.⁠[4]

In April 2001, at a special gathering of community members and press, then-president Charles Vest presented MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), calling it “bold and innovative.” It grew out of the Lifelong Learning Committee, chaired by Professor Dick KP Yue, which Vest had asked to propose an educational technology project extending MIT’s reach beyond its classrooms; the committee recommended OCW, a free website offering MIT’s course materials. Within a year OCW had published a pilot website with 50 courses.⁠[10]

As of April 2021, OCW offered materials from more than 2,570 graduate and undergraduate courses, including syllabi, lecture notes, problem sets, assignments and recorded lectures, developed by 1,735 faculty and lecturers from 33 academic units across all five schools; it had had more than 210 million unique users, and over 70 percent of its 2020 users came from outside the United States. Early in the Covid-19 pandemic its monthly visits reached 2.2 million, a 75 percent increase over 2019.⁠[10]

Susan Hockfield was president from 2004 to 2012 and L. Rafael Reif from 2012 to 2022. In February 2022 Reif announced his intention to step down after 10 years.⁠[4][11]

On October 15, 2018, MIT announced a $1 billion commitment to address the opportunities and challenges of computing and artificial intelligence, which it called the single largest investment in computing and AI by an American academic institution. At its center was the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing, for which Stephen A. SchwarzmanStephen A. SchwarzmanStephen A. Schwarzman (Chinese name Su Shimin) is an American financier who co-founded the alternative asset manager Blackstone with Peter G. Peterson in 1985 and has long served as its chairman and CEO; he is also known for large gifts to institutions including Tsinghua University, MIT, the University of Oxford and Yale.Open the full entry, chairman, CEO and co-founder of Blackstone, gave a $350 million foundational gift; MIT had raised a further $300 million, for a total of $650 million. The plan called for 50 new faculty positions (25 in the college and 25 jointly appointed with other departments), an opening in September 2019 and a signature new building on campus to headquarter the college, to be completed in 2022.⁠[12]

On April 7, 2022, MIT announced that Building 12, home of MIT.nano, would be named the Lisa T. Su Building in recognition of the generosity of Lisa SuLisa SuLisa Su is a semiconductor engineer and business executive who serves as Chair and CEO of AMD. She earned bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and worked at Texas Instruments, IBM, and Freescale. After joining AMD in 2012, she became CEO in 2014, led the company’s growth in high-performance computing, data centers, and artificial intelligence, and also became Chair in 2022.Open the full entry, chair and CEO of AMDAMDAMD (Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.) is a publicly traded U.S. semiconductor company founded in 1969 and headquartered in Santa Clara, California; its stock trades on Nasdaq under the ticker AMD. The company develops CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, adaptive systems-on-chip and related software, mainly for the data center, personal computer, gaming and embedded markets; its product brands include Ryzen, EPYC, Radeon and Instinct.Open the full entry, with a dedication ceremony planned for May 14. The MIT.nano building had opened in 2018. In 2018 Lisa Su had established the Lisa Su Fellowship Fund, which supports women graduate students who have shown progress and accomplishments in nanotechnology; MIT called her the first MIT alumna to make a gift for a building that will bear her own name.⁠[13]

On October 20, 2022, the MIT Corporation elected Sally Kornbluth as MIT’s 18th president, to take office on January 1, 2023, succeeding L. Rafael Reif; Diane B. GreeneDiane GreeneDiane Greene is an engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded the virtualization software company VMware in 1998 and was its president and CEO until 2008, then led Google’s cloud business from 2015 to early 2019. Since 2020 she has chaired the MIT Corporation.Open the full entry, then chair of the MIT Corporation and an MIT alumna (SM 1978), was quoted in the announcement. Kornbluth was then provost of Duke University (since July 1, 2014, the first woman in that role) and Jo Rae Wright University Professor of Biology; she had been on the Duke University faculty since 1994, first in Pharmacology and Cancer Biology in the School of Medicine and then in the Department of Biology in Trinity College, and had served as vice dean for basic science at the Duke School of Medicine from 2006 to 2014.⁠[11]

Sally Kornbluth became MIT’s 18th president in January 2023. She received a BA in political science from Williams CollegeWilliams CollegeWilliams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It grew out of a free school established under the will of the colonial officer Ephraim Williams Jr. that opened in 1791, was chartered as a college in 1793, and is the second-oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts.Open the full entry in 1982, a BA in genetics from the University of CambridgeUniversity of CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a university in Cambridge, England, United Kingdom. It gives 1209 as its founding date, is made up of Schools, Faculties, Departments and autonomous Colleges, and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry in 1984, where she studied on a scholarship, and a PhD in molecular oncology from The Rockefeller UniversityThe Rockefeller UniversityThe Rockefeller University is a biomedical research university on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in New York City, devoted mainly to scientific research and graduate education; it grew out of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research founded by John D. Rockefeller.Open the full entry in 1989, and did postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Diego; her research concerns processes central to understanding cancer and various degenerative disorders, including how cancer cells evade apoptosis and how metabolism regulates cell death.⁠[14][11]

On February 8, 2024, Kornbluth wrote to the MIT community announcing the Climate Project at MIT, described as a new strategy for accelerated, university-led innovation with three elements, the Climate Missions, the Climate Frontier projects and the Climate HQ; its framing was led by Vice Provost Richard Lester after consulting more than 150 faculty and senior researchers. The six Climate Missions are Decarbonizing Energy and Industry; Restoring the Atmosphere, Protecting the Land and Oceans; Empowering Frontline Communities; Building and Adapting Healthy, Resilient Cities; Inventing New Policy Approaches; and Wild Cards. MIT committed $50 million of Institute resources, which the letter calls the largest direct investment the Institute has ever made in funding climate work, and the MIT Sloan School of Management $25 million to endow a new climate policy center, for $75 million in initial support; a new post of Vice President for Climate, reporting to the president and overseeing the project, its fundraising and implementation, was created.⁠[15]

Under Kornbluth, MIT also launched the MIT Human Insight Collaborative (MITHIC, 2024), the MIT Generative AI Impact Consortium (MGAIC, 2025), the MIT Initiative for New Manufacturing (2025), the quantum initiative QMIT (December 2025) and the MIT Health and Life Sciences Collaborative (MIT HEALS).⁠[14]

As of October 2025, MIT had 11,816 students, 4,561 undergraduates (39 percent, of whom 2,192, or 48 percent, were women) and 7,255 graduate students (61 percent, of whom 3,031, or 42 percent, were women); in 2025–2026 there were 3,437 international students in degree programs (529 undergraduates, 12 percent of undergraduates, and 2,908 graduate students, 41 percent of graduate students), and a further 593 exchange, visiting and special students took part in MIT programs; by region, 52 percent of international students came from Asia, 21 percent from Europe, 9 percent from Latin America and the Caribbean, 7 percent from the Middle East, 6 percent from North America, 3.5 percent from Africa and 1.5 percent from Oceania; and students came from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, four territories and 137 foreign countries.⁠[16][3]

As of October 2025, MIT had 1,087 professors of all ranks, 320 of them women and 262 (24 percent) from U.S. minority groups, comprising 702 professors, 233 associate professors and 152 assistant professors; by school, the School of Engineering had 391, the School of Science 288, the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 191, the Schwarzman College of Computing 159 (faculty shared with other schools are counted in both), the Sloan School of Management 117 the School of Architecture and Planning 87 and other units 13. Total instructional staff numbered 2,118, including, besides the professors, 839 senior lecturers, lecturers and professors emeriti, 142 instructors (including technical instructors) and 50 professors of the practice and adjunct faculty. As of October 30, 2025, MIT had 17,033 employees and an undergraduate student-to-faculty and instructional staff ratio of 3:1. In fall 2025 about 5,730 researchers worked with MIT faculty and students, including 1,414 postdoctoral scholars and 513 visiting faculty and scientists.⁠[17][3][18]

For the Class of 2029, MIT received 29,281 first-year applications and admitted 1,334 (4.6 percent). The undergraduate cost of attendance before aid in 2025–2026 was $89,340, including $64,730 in tuition and fees; in 2024–2025, 39 percent of undergraduates attended tuition-free, 57 percent were awarded an MIT scholarship with a median of $69,777, and 88 percent of the Class of 2025 graduated with no student loan debt.⁠[19]

In fiscal year 2025, the market value of MIT’s endowed funds was $27,366.2 million and that of its total investments $35,790.3 million; operating revenues were $5,372.8 million, including $1,565.4 million (29 percent) of investment return to operations, $1,476.1 million (27 percent) of sponsored support for Lincoln Laboratory, $917.9 million (17 percent) of campus sponsored support $436.1 million (8 percent) of net tuition, $473.0 million (9 percent) of gifts and bequests for operations, $296.0 million (6 percent) of other revenue, $181.1 million (3 percent) from auxiliary enterprises and $27.2 million (1 percent) of sponsored support for the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology; operating expenditures were $5,117.2 million, of which $2,205.8 million (43 percent) was sponsored research, $1,668.2 million (33 percent) instruction and unsponsored research and $1,243.2 million (24 percent) general and administrative. The net book value of land, buildings and equipment was $5,638.3 million. Gifts and pledge payments that year totaled $681.6 million, including $360.9 million from foundations, $200.0 million from individuals and $120.6 million from corporations.⁠[20]

In fiscal year 2025, research expenditures by primary sponsor totaled $891.87 million, including $196.19 million (22.0 percent) from the Department of Health and Human Services, $159.37 million (17.9 percent) from industry, $128.74 million (14.4 percent) from the Department of Defense, $109.69 million (12.3 percent) from foundations and other nonprofits, $93.64 million (10.5 percent) from the Department of Energy, $93.29 million (10.5 percent) from the National Science Foundation $38.65 million (4.3 percent) from NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry, $27.79 million (3.1 percent) from state, local and foreign governments, $23.91 million (2.7 percent) from MIT internal sources and $20.60 million (2.3 percent) from all other federal agencies.⁠[18]

The “About MIT” page states that MIT’s board of trustees, the MIT Corporation, includes 79 leaders in engineering, science, industry, education and other professions.⁠[3]

On December 11, 2025, MIT announced that Lisa Su would deliver the 2026 Commencement address. On May 28, 2026, she spoke at the OneMIT Commencement ceremony for the Class of 2026, describing artificial intelligence as different from earlier technology waves such as the internet, mobile and cloud computing and able to speed up discovery across fields and help doctors and researchers in health care, and saying that people, not technology, decide which problems matter; she said that “Technology itself does not decide what the future looks like,” urged graduates to “be ambitious about the problems you choose” and to trust their engineer’s instinct, and reflected on MIT’s motto, “Mens et manus.”⁠[21][22]

On October 6, 2026, Kornbluth announced the MIT for America initiative in a letter to the Institute community, aimed at strengthening STEM education across the United States from kindergarten through community college, with a focus on mathematics, hands-on making and design, and the constructive use of artificial intelligence. It has three parts: mathematical thinking and problem solving, building on the MIT for America Calculus Project, launched a year earlier, in which MIT students and alumni volunteer to tutor calculus for school districts nationwide; living, learning and working with AI, covering teacher training and AI-skills programs for technical-vocational schools and community colleges, with MIT RAISE among the leaders; and designing, making and innovating, expanding hands-on learning, fab labs, makerspaces and national design challenges. The initiative is headed by Claudia Urrea, who also heads the MIT pK-12 Initiative, with Eric Klopfer and Cynthia Breazeal as faculty co-directors; on October 1, MIT launched Pathways for AI Training and Hiring (PATH), starting with Georgia State University, to bring AI training to two-year and four-year colleges. Kornbluth said the initiative “is grounded in our deep belief in potential over pedigree.”⁠[23]

MIT’s presidents, in order: William Barton Rogers (1862–1870), John Daniel Runkle (1870–1878), William Barton Rogers (1879–1881), Francis Amasa Walker (1881–1897), James Mason Crafts (1897–1900), Henry Smith Pritchett (1900–1907), Richard Cockburn Maclaurin (1909–1920), Ernest Fox Nichols (1921–1922), Samuel Wesley Stratton (1923–1930), Karl Taylor Compton (1930–1948), James Rhyne Killian, Jr. (1948–1958), Julius Adams Stratton (1959–1966), Howard Wesley Johnson (1966–1971), Jerome Bert Wiesner (1971–1980), Paul Edward Gray (1980–1990), Charles Marstiller Vest (1990–2004), Susan Hockfield (2004–2012), L. Rafael Reif (2012–2022) and Sally Kornbluth (from 2023).⁠[4]

MIT has five schools and a college: the School of Architecture and Planning (architecture, media arts and sciences, urban studies and planning); the School of Engineering (aeronautics and astronautics, biological engineering, chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, electrical engineering and computer science, the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering, and nuclear science and engineering); the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (anthropology, comparative media studies/writing, economics, global languages, history, humanities, linguistics and philosophy, literature, music and theater arts, political science, and science, technology, and society); the MIT Sloan School of Management (management); the School of Science (biology, brain and cognitive sciences, chemistry, earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences, mathematics, and physics); and the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society report jointly to the dean of engineering and the dean of computing.⁠[24]

The MIT Facts website lists 56 undergraduate majors and 62 minors, more than 70 research centers, labs and programs and about 700 companies collaborating on faculty and student research.⁠[19]

MIT Facts lists, by decade, research firsts including pioneering high-speed photography in the 1930s; engineering practical microwave radar in the 1940s; building the magnetic core memory that made digital computers possible in the 1950s; developing inertial guidance systems for the Apollo space program in the 1960s; inventing the first workable public-key cryptographic system in the 1970s; discovering the smallest known and most abundant photosynthetic bacteria in the ocean in the 1980s; showing how animals form memories of new environments, using new genetic and multiple-cell monitoring technologies, in the 1990s; creating a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity in the 2000s; and, in the 2010s, making with the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and others the first direct detection of gravitational waves reaching Earth, confirming a prediction Albert EinsteinAlbert EinsteinAlbert Einstein (1879–1955) was a German-born physicist who formulated the special theory of relativity in 1905 and the general theory in 1915 and received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect. From 1933 until his death he was a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, United States.Open the full entry made a century earlier.⁠[18]

Achievements the same page lists for the current decade include a steelmaking process that produces no emissions other than pure oxygen; a CRISPR protein that targets RNA rather than DNA, adapted as a rapid, low-cost, highly sensitive diagnostic tool; the first prosthetic leg allowing bionic walking under the user’s full neural control, developed with clinicians at Brigham and Women’s Hospital; a high-temperature superconducting electromagnet ramped to 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth; the first direct image of a black hole, by an international team of more than 200 scientists; oxygen produced on the surface of Mars by a lunchbox-sized instrument; and the first observation of a star swallowing a planet. In technology licensing the page, which gives no year, lists 38 companies started using MIT intellectual property, 684 invention disclosures (116 from Lincoln Laboratory), 623 new U.S. patent applications filed and 282 U.S. patents issued.⁠[18]

MIT counts 106 Nobel PrizeNobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is an international award established under the will of Alfred Nobel, comprising five prizes in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine, literature and peace, awarded since 1901; its funds are managed by the Nobel Foundation, whose Board is based in Stockholm. The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, established in 1968, is not a Nobel Prize.Open the full entry laureates, 18 A. M. Turing Award winners, 85 MacArthur Fellows and 35 National Medal of Technology and Innovation winners among members of its community; for the National Medal of Science, the “About MIT” page gives 64 winners and MIT Facts gives 65. The MIT Facts “Awards & Honors” page also lists 66 Institute Professors, 21 John Bates Clark Medal winners, 7 Pulitzer Prize winners, 2 Millennium Technology Prize winners, 735 members of the National Academy of Engineering, 321 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 89 members of the National Academy of Medicine, 220 Guggenheim Fellows and 161 Fulbright Scholars.⁠[3][25]

The Nobel laureates MIT Facts lists among current faculty and staff are Daron Acemoglu (economics, 2024), Joshua Angrist (economics, 2021), Abhijit Banerjee (economics, 2019), Moungi G. Bawendi (chemistry, 2023), Esther Duflo (economics, 2019), H. Robert Horvitz (physiology or medicine, 2002), Simon Johnson (economics, 2024), Wolfgang Ketterle (physics, 2001), Robert C. Merton (economics, 1997), Susan Solomon (peace, 2007, recognized as co-chair of IPCC Working Group One), Samuel C. C. Ting (physics, 1976) and Jean Marcel Tirole (economics, 2014); the Turing Award winners it lists are Butler W. Lampson (1992) and Michael Stonebraker (2014).⁠[25]

Richard FeynmanRichard FeynmanRichard Feynman (Richard Phillips Feynman, 1918–1988) was an American theoretical physicist who rebuilt quantum electrodynamics with the path-integral formulation and Feynman diagrams, for which he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. He took part in the Manhattan Project during World War II and then taught for decades at the California Institute of Technology, where his introductory physics course became The Feynman Lectures on Physics; in 1986, as a member of the presidential commission investigating the space shuttle Challenger accident, he used ice water to demonstrate that the O-ring lost its resilience at low temperature.Open the full entry received a BS in physics from MIT in 1939; he shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in physics with J. Schwinger and S. I. Tomonaga.⁠[26]

Ben BernankeBen BernankeBen Bernanke (Ben S. Bernanke, born 1953) is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 to 2014, shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for research on banks and financial crises, and is a fellow at the Brookings Institution.Open the full entry received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private research university in Massachusetts, established by the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature in 1636 and named in 1639 for early benefactor John Harvard. Its principal campuses are in Cambridge and the Allston and Longwood neighborhoods of Boston. It includes Harvard College, graduate and professional schools, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Two governing boards share oversight. Alan M. Garber was president as of October 2026, and the endowment stood at $56.9 billion at the end of fiscal 2025.Open the full entry in 1975 and a doctorate in economics from MIT in 1979; he chaired the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve SystemFederal Reserve SystemThe Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. Created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, it consists of the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks and the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC).Open the full entry from February 2006, beginning a second term in February 2010, until January 2014, when Janet Yellen succeeded him.⁠[27]

Ray KurzweilRay KurzweilRay Kurzweil is an American inventor, author and futurist and a principal researcher at Google. He was the principal inventor of the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, omni-font optical character recognition and the CCD flatbed scanner, and is known for Kurzweil synthesizers and speech recognition systems; in books such as The Singularity Is Near he predicted that artificial intelligence would reach human level by 2029 and that humans would merge with machine intelligence around 2045 (the “Singularity”), making him a leading figure of techno-optimism and transhumanism, while his predictions have also long drawn criticism.Open the full entry began corresponding in high school with Marvin Minsky, an artificial intelligence researcher at MIT, chose MIT partly because of that relationship, double-majored in computer science and creative writing and completed his BS in 1970; in 2001 he won the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.⁠[28]

Fred WilsonFred WilsonFred Wilson is an American venture capitalist, co-founder and partner of the New York venture firm Union Square Ventures (USV), and earlier co-founder, with Jerry Colonna, of the internet investment firm Flatiron Partners. He has written the blog AVC since 2003, chaired Etsy’s board for many years, and is a director of Coinbase.Open the full entry of Union Square Ventures holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT and an MBA from the Wharton SchoolWharton SchoolThe Wharton School is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania. Established through Joseph Wharton’s gift in 1881, it offers undergraduate, MBA, doctoral and executive education.Open the full entry.⁠[29]

Michael SaylorMichael SaylorMichael Saylor is the founder and executive chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), a company that has been buying bitcoin since 2020 and describes itself as the world’s first and largest “Bitcoin Treasury Company.”Open the full entry attended MIT on a full Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship and obtained dual degrees in aeronautics and astronautics and in science, technology and society, graduating with highest honors in 1987; in 1989, at the age of 24, he founded StrategyStrategyStrategy (formerly MicroStrategy) is a Nasdaq-listed company (ticker MSTR) headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, United States, founded in 1989 by Michael Saylor and originally built on enterprise analytics software. Since 2020, the company has used bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset and describes itself as the world’s first and largest Bitcoin Treasury Company; as of September 27, 2026, it held 847,666 bitcoins. Its current Chief Executive Officer is Phong Le.Open the full entry, where he has been executive chairman since August 2022.⁠[30]

Lisa Su earned bachelor’s (1990), master’s (1991) and doctoral (1994) degrees in electrical engineering at MIT joined AMD in 2012 and is its chair and CEO.⁠[21]

Sam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-FriedSam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the crypto hedge fund Alameda Research. After FTX collapsed in November 2022, he was charged in the United States with misappropriating customer funds; in November 2023 a jury found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, in March 2024 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit about $11 billion, and in 2026 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected his appeal.Open the full entry graduated from MIT with a degree in physics in 2014.⁠[31]

While attending MIT at 18, Patrick CollisonPatrick CollisonPatrick Collison is an entrepreneur who grew up in Ireland. In 2010 he cofounded the payments and financial infrastructure company Stripe with his brother John Collison and serves as its chief executive; he is also a cofounder of the biomedical research organization Arc Institute and has been a director of Meta since 2025.Open the full entry, the founder of Stripe, and his brother decided to build a better version of eBayeBayeBay Inc. is an online marketplace company headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, founded in 1995 by Pierre Omidyar; it started out with person-to-person online auctions and listed on Nasdaq in 1998. As of the end of 2025, it had 135 million active buyers, and its platform’s gross merchandise volume in 2025 was nearly $80 billion.Open the full entry; after applying to Y Combinator they merged with Kulveer and Harjeet Taggar to build Auctomatic.⁠[32]

Leslie GrovesLeslie GrovesLeslie Groves (1896–1970) was a United States Army general who headed the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb.Open the full entry studied engineering at the University of Washington and at MIT before enrolling at West Point in 1916; in September 1942 he was ordered to take command of the Manhattan Engineer DistrictManhattan ProjectThe Manhattan Project was the United States program that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War, managed from 1942 by the Manhattan Engineer District of the Army Corps of Engineers with British and Canadian participation. It built plants and laboratories at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Hanford, Washington, and Los Alamos, New Mexico, among other sites, carried out the first nuclear test in 1945, and produced the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, later that year; after the war its functions passed to the civilian Atomic Energy Commission.Open the full entry of the Manhattan Project.⁠[33]

Silvio MicaliSilvio MicaliSilvio Micali is an Italian-born American computer scientist and cryptographer, and the Ford Professor of Engineering in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With Shafi Goldwasser he introduced probabilistic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, and other foundational concepts of modern cryptography, for which the two received the 2012 Turing Award; in 2017 he founded the blockchain project Algorand, proposing a Pure Proof-of-Stake consensus built on verifiable random functions and cryptographic sortition.Open the full entry has been on the MIT faculty, in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, since 1983; he is Ford Professor of Engineering and has received the Turing Award, the Gödel Prize and the RSA Prize; he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and holds a Laurea in mathematics from the University of Rome and a PhD in computer science from the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry.⁠[34]

Noam ChomskyNoam ChomskyNoam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher and political activist who began teaching at MIT in 1955; his theory of generative grammar helped give rise to cognitive science, and since the 1960s he has been a prominent critic of US foreign policy and the mainstream media; he became a laureate professor at the University of Arizona in 2017.Open the full entry is Institute Professor and Professor of Linguistics emeritus at MIT.⁠[35]

Robert LangerRobert LangerRobert Langer is an American chemical and biomedical engineer and the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT, known for his work on polymer-based controlled drug release and tissue engineering; he co-founded companies including Moderna and has received the U.S. National Medal of Science, the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the Millennium Technology Prize and the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering.Open the full entry is MIT’s David H. Koch (1962) Institute Professor; his laboratory in the Department of Chemical Engineering works at the interface of biotechnology and materials science, focusing on polymer systems that release drugs at controlled rates over long periods.⁠[36]

Gilbert StrangGilbert StrangGilbert Strang is an American mathematician who taught in MIT’s Department of Mathematics for more than six decades from 1962 until his retirement in 2023; he is known for his work on linear algebra and finite element analysis and for textbooks such as Introduction to Linear Algebra, and his linear algebra video lectures are among the most watched on MIT OpenCourseWare.Open the full entry was an undergraduate at MIT and a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, and became a professor of mathematics at MIT; his homepage states that the video lectures of his linear algebra course 18.06 are on MIT OpenCourseWare and YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry.⁠[37]

Before his appointment at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry, Paul KrugmanPaul KrugmanPaul Krugman is an economist who was the sole winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on new trade theory and economic geography; after teaching at Yale, MIT, Stanford and Princeton he has been a Distinguished Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center since 2015. He wrote a New York Times column from 2000 to 2024 and has since written mainly on Substack; he appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast in 2020.Open the full entry served on the MIT faculty, his last post being Ford International Professor of Economics.⁠[38]

Laura DemingLaura DemingLaura Deming is a biotechnology venture capitalist and entrepreneur who founded The Longevity Fund in 2011 to invest in longevity and age-related disease companies, co-founded its successor fund age1, and co-founded Until Labs (formerly Cradle), which develops reversible cryopreservation technology, with Hunter Davis, serving as its CEO.Open the full entry entered MIT at 14 and majored in physics (Course 8); she was selected for the first class of the Thiel FellowshipThiel FellowshipThe Thiel Fellowship is a two-year grant program started by investor Peter Thiel and run by the Thiel Foundation that funds young people who skip or stop out of college to build new things instead. The program has been criticized by figures in education for encouraging young people to leave college.Open the full entry in 2011 and dropped out of MIT at 17 to start a venture capital fund.⁠[39][40][41]

Eden FullEden FullEden Full (also Eden Full Goh) is a Canadian engineer, inventor and entrepreneur who invented the SunSaluter, a low-cost device that makes solar panels track the sun using water and gravity, and founded the nonprofit of the same name; she left Princeton University in 2011 as a member of the first class of the Thiel Fellowship and in 2018 founded Mobot, a company that tests mobile apps with mechanical robots, of which she is CEO.Open the full entry was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2011; an MIT Climate Portal article of July 27, 2018 calls her a Grand Prize winner of MIT’s Climate CoLab.⁠[41][42]

Jimmy KoppelJimmy KoppelJimmy Koppel (who publishes as James Koppel) is a computer science researcher, serial entrepreneur, software design teacher and founder of Mirdin whose research aims to make program transformation and program synthesis tools easier to build; he was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2012.Open the full entry was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2012 and later earned an M.S. (2017) and a Ph.D. (2021) in computer science at MIT; his doctoral thesis, “Meta-metaprogramming,” was completed in September 2021 in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science under Armando Solar-Lezama and deposited in DSpace@MIT.⁠[43][44][45]

Thomas SohmersThomas SohmersThomas Sohmers is a processor architect and entrepreneur who left high school after being selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2013 and founded the processor startup REX Computing, which developed the energy-efficiency-focused Neo processor architecture; after working at Lambda and Groq, he co-founded the AI inference chip and systems company Positron AI in 2023.Open the full entry’s résumé lists him as a researcher at the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies from February 2010 to May 2013, rapidly prototyping augmented reality, gestural interfaces and laser communications; he was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2013, and the list of fellows republished by Entrepreneur states that he had been working at an MIT research lab since he was 13.⁠[46][47]

Among the Thiel Fellows of 2014, Technical.ly wrote on June 25, 2014 that Ari WeinsteinAri WeinsteinAri Weinstein is a software developer and entrepreneur who co-founded Workflow, an iOS automation app that Apple acquired in 2017 and that became Apple’s Shortcuts. Selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2014, he founded Software Applications Incorporated, maker of the Mac AI assistant Sky, with Conrad Kramer and Kim Beverett in 2023; OpenAI acquired the company in 2025.Open the full entry had taken a leave from MIT to pursue software development (and the Thiel Fellowship); Echoing Green’s profile states that M. C. McGrathM. C. McGrathM. C. McGrath is a programmer and researcher and the founder of Transparency Toolkit, a nonprofit that builds free software to help journalists, activists and human rights groups collect and analyze data; he built ICWatch, a database of public LinkedIn résumés of people in the intelligence community, and was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2014.Open the full entry studied civic technology at Boston UniversityBoston UniversityBoston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It traces its origins to the Newbury Biblical Institute, a Methodist theological school founded in Vermont in 1839, was chartered as a university in 1869, and has been a member of the Association of American Universities since 2012.Open the full entry and did research at the MIT Media Lab; and Conrad KramerConrad KramerConrad Kramer is a software developer and entrepreneur, a co-founder of the iOS automation app Workflow, which Apple acquired in 2017 and which became the basis of Apple’s Shortcuts app. He was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2014, and in 2023 he co-founded, with Ari Weinstein and Kim Beverett, Software Applications Incorporated, the maker of the Mac AI app Sky, which OpenAI acquired in 2025.Open the full entry recalled in an April 2016 South Jersey Biz interview that he had been accepted to MIT but chose the Thiel Fellowship.⁠[48][49][50][51]

Among the Thiel Fellows of 2016, Rough Draft Ventures writes that Matt ArbesfeldMatt ArbesfeldMatt Arbesfeld (Matthew Arbesfeld) is a software engineer and entrepreneur, the co-founder and chief executive of LogRocket, a front-end monitoring and product analytics company; before that he co-founded the developer-tools company AppHub with Ben Edelstein, and he was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2016.Open the full entry went to MIT and that his company AppHub was born out of MIT and Columbia University, and Software Engineering Radio introduced him in 2021 as having studied computer science at MIT; Destiny Tech100 Inc.’s 2024 proxy statement states that Sohail PrasadSohail PrasadSohail Prasad is an entrepreneur and investor who co-founded Equidate, a marketplace for shares in private companies later renamed Forge Global, with Samvit Ramadurgam, and who was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2016; he founded D/XYZ and is chairman and chief executive of Destiny Tech100 Inc., a closed-end fund listed on the New York Stock Exchange.Open the full entry held various roles at GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry and the MIT Media Lab.⁠[52][53][54][55]

Among the Thiel Fellows of 2019, CBS NewsCBS NewsCBS News is the news organization of the U.S. CBS system, part of Paramount, providing news coverage through television, the web and streaming. Its history extends from radio newsgathering to television and digital platforms; its signature programs include CBS Evening News, 60 Minutes and Face the Nation, and CBS News 24/7 is its streaming news service.Open the full entry profiled Kai KloepferKai KloepferKai Kloepfer is an entrepreneur, the founder and chief executive of the firearms technology company Biofire. He began building a fingerprint-locked “smart gun” that only authorized users can fire while in high school; in 2023 Biofire launched a 9 mm handgun that uses both fingerprint and 3D facial recognition, and the company said it would begin shipping by the end of March 2024.Open the full entry on January 12, 2017 as an MIT freshman; Boston.com wrote on July 24, 2018 that he had taken an indefinite leave of absence from MIT a few weeks earlier to grow Biofire and planned to return once the company was up and running, while 5280 writes that he dropped out of MIT in 2018. CNBCCNBCCNBC is an American business and financial news cable channel launched by NBC in 1989; it merged with its rival FNN in 1991 and since January 2026 has been part of Versant Media Group, spun off from Comcast.Open the full entry writes that Iddris Sandu, by his own account, was twice offered admission to MIT but declined in order to be a change agent for African-American culture.⁠[56][57][58][59][60]

Brian GuBrian GuBrian Gu, who works under the pseudonym gubsheep, is the creator of Dark Forest, a decentralized real-time strategy game that runs on Ethereum and uses zkSNARKs, and a co-founder of the 0xPARC Foundation, an applied cryptography research and development organization; he is a member of the 2020 class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2020; a 2022 Naavik analysis writes that the blockchain game Dark Forest began as his undergraduate project while he was a student at MIT, and that he took a leave from school to work on the game.⁠[61][62]

Ethan ThorntonEthan ThorntonEthan Thornton is the founder and chief executive of Mach Industries, an American defense technology company. He dropped out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at 19 to start the company and was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2023; after an extension of its Series C in September 2026, Mach Industries was valued at $3.7 billion.Open the full entry was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2023. He studied aerospace engineering at MIT and began working with MIT Lincoln Laboratory before his first academic year, later leaving MIT to build Mach Industries (the Orange County Business Journal writes that he left during his freshman year, while TechCrunchTechCrunchTechCrunch is an American technology news outlet founded in 2005 by Michael Arrington and Keith Teare and headquartered in San Francisco; it mainly covers technology companies, startups, and venture capital, and hosts events such as TechCrunch Disrupt. Its ownership passed successively through AOL, Verizon, and Yahoo, and in 2025 Regent announced its acquisition.Open the full entry writes that he finished his first year the following spring while running the company); the MIT Alumni Association’s roundup of people with MIT ties on the 2024 ForbesForbesForbes is an American business media brand that began with Forbes magazine, founded by B.C. Forbes in 1917. It is known for rankings such as the Forbes 400, the World’s Billionaires list and 30 Under 30, and operates Forbes.com, ForbesLive events and licensed editions in 81 countries. Since 2014 a majority stake has been held by the Hong Kong investment group Integrated Whale Media; a 2021 plan to list on the New York Stock Exchange through a special purpose acquisition company was terminated in 2022. It is headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey.Open the full entry 30 Under 30 list notes that he dropped out of MIT.⁠[63][64][65][66]

Christopher ZhuChristopher ZhuChristopher Zhu (usually written Chris Zhu by his company and the press) is a co-founder of Etched, a company that develops specialized inference chips and cluster systems for running large AI models; he is a member of the 2024 class of the Thiel Fellowship.Open the full entry was selected as a Thiel Fellow in 2024; the alumni list of MIT PRIMES, the MIT mathematics department’s research program for high-school students, includes him with the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 and Harvard as his college.⁠[67][68]

Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Official website: https://www.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[69]

MIT Lincoln Laboratory: Official website: https://www.ll.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

X: Public account: https://x.com/mit (opens in a new window).⁠[69][70]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/school/mit/ (opens in a new window).⁠[70]

YouTube: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/mit (opens in a new window).⁠[69][70]

Instagram: Public account: https://www.instagram.com/mit/ (opens in a new window).⁠[69][70]

Facebook: Public account: https://www.facebook.com/MITnews (opens in a new window).⁠[69][70]

TikTok: Public account: https://www.tiktok.com/@mit (opens in a new window).⁠[70]