Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 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.

William Barton Rogers founded MIT in 1861 to provide "useful knowledge" amid American industrialization. Initially funded by a federal land grant, the institute adopted a German polytechnic model emphasizing laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering, and moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916. Early growth came through research contracts with private industry, though the institute remained financially constrained and vocationally oriented into the 1930s.

MIT's transformation into a major research enterprise began during World War II, when projects like the Radiation Laboratory made it the nation's largest wartime R&D contractor. Graduate enrollment and research funding grew rapidly in the postwar decades as faculty like Vannevar Bush shaped a new system of federal support for basic science. In the late twentieth century, MIT became closely associated with computer science, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and "big science" initiatives like the Apollo program and the LIGO detector. Engineering remains its largest school, though MIT has also developed leading programs in basic science, economics, management, architecture, and humanities. The institute has an entrepreneurial culture and its faculty and alumni have founded many notable companies.

The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) along the Charles River. Academic buildings are connected by an extensive corridor system, and the campus includes notable modernist buildings. MIT's off-campus operations include the Lincoln Laboratory and the Haystack Observatory, as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad and Whitehead Institutes. Undergraduate life is known for hands-on research and elaborate pranks.

, 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 the US Air Force, and 8 foreign heads of state have been affiliated with MIT. Provided by Wikipedia