List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology people
This is a list of famous individuals associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including graduates, former students, and professors.
Prominent faculty members
A few distinguished members of the faculty have held the title of Institute Professor. These include:
- Manson Benedict , nuclear engineering
- Emilio Bizzi , brain and cognitive sciences
- Noam Chomsky, linguistics
- Morris Cohen, materials science and engineering
- John M. Deutch, chemistry, former director of the CIA
- Peter Diamond , economics
- Mildred Dresselhaus, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and physics
- Jerome Friedman, physics
- Morris Halle, linguistics and philosophy
- John Harbison, music
- Arthur von Hippel , EECS
- Chia-Chiao Lin , mathematics
- John Little, management
- Francis Low , physics
- Joel Moses , EECS
- Thomas Magnanti , EECS and management
- Philip Morrison, physics
- Paul Samuelson, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Ascher Shapiro , mechanical engineering
- Phillip Sharp , biology
- Isadore Singer, mathematics
- Robert Solow, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Daniel Wang , chemical engineering
- John Waugh , chemistry
- Sheila Widnall , aerospace
Other prominent current and former faculty and researchers include:
- Hal Abelson -- computer scientist
- George Boolos -- philosopher and mathematical logician
- Amar G. Bose -- audio entrepreneur, founder of Bose Corporation
- Rodney Brooks -- behavioural roboticist
- James D. Bruce -- Vice President for Information Systems, Professor of Electrical Engineering
- Vannevar Bush -- scientist & engineer, bureaucrat
- B.D. Colen -- journalist, photographer
- John M. Deutch -- former CIA director
- "Doc" Edgerton -- photographer, scientist
- John R. Hauser , management
- J. C. R. Licklider -- leader of the IPTO
- Alan Lightman -- writer, physicist
- Robert Langer , Chemical Engineering
- John Maeda -- artist, graphic designer, computer scientist
- William J. Mitchell -- architect, writer, media guru
- Marvin Minsky -- artificial intelligence guru
- Franco Modigliani -- Nobel prize-winner, economist
- Mario Molina-- chemistry and EAPS
- John Nash -- Nobel prize-winner, mathematician
- Nicholas Negroponte -- media wonk
- Seymour Papert -- education & computers
- Steven Pinker -- cognitive scientist
- Ellen Swallow Richards -- the first woman in America accepted to any school of science and technology, first female instructor at MIT, first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry, foremost female industrial and environmental chemist in the United States in the 1800s
- Gian-Carlo Rota -- mathematician & philosopher
- Frederick P. Salvucci -- civil engineer, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, and principal planner of the Big Dig
- Edgar Schein -- organizational psychologist
- Myron S. Scholes -- Nobel prize-winner, economist
- Claude E. Shannon -- information theorist
- Isadore Singer -- mathematician, Institute Professor, joint winner of the 2004 Abel Prize
- Richard Stallman -- hacker, political campaigner, founder of the GNU Project and the FSF, author of GNU Emacs
- Ivan Sutherland -- computer graphics pioneer
- Susumu Tonegawa -- molecular biologist, 1987 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Sherry Turkle -- clinical psychologist and sociologist
- Joseph Weizenbaum -- computer scientist
- Norbert Wiener -- mathematician
- Frank Wilczek, physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics
- Walter Lewin -- physicist
Notable alumni
See also: MIT Sloan School of Management Alumni. Names present there should also be included on this list.
- Tadatoshi Akiba -- Mayor of Hiroshima, Ph.D. (math) 1970
- Virgilio Barco -- president of Colombia
- Hans A. Bethe -- physicist
- Barry Blesser -- audio engineer, one-time president of the AES
- Manuel Blum, computer scientist, recipient of the Turing Award in 1995 for his studies in computational complexity theory
- Dan Bricklin -- co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program
- Whitfield Diffie -- pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
- Donald Douglas -- co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- K. Eric Drexler -- nanotechnologist
- Luis A. Ferré -- governor of Puerto Rico
- José Figueres Ferrer -- president of Costa Rica
- Carly Fiorina -- former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
- William Clay Ford, Jr. -- Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company
- Bill Gosper -- one of the founders of the original hacker community, originator of hashlife
- Cecil H. Green - co-founder of Texas Instruments
- George Ellery Hale - astronomer
- William R. Hewlett -- (Master's degree) co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
- Danny Hillis -- co-founder of Thinking Machines and former Disney fellow
- Mark Horowitz , B.S. and M.S. 1978-- founder of Rambus
- David A. Huffman -- computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
- C.D. Howe -- Canadian politician and cabinet minister
- Shirley Jackson (physicist) - prominent African-American physicist and president of RPI
- Martin C. Jischke -- President of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
- Larry Kahn -- tiddlywinks champion
- Brewster Kahle -- internet archivist
- Mitch Kapor -- software entrepreneur
- Steve Kirsch -- inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation (the original company behind FrameMaker), founder of Infoseek Corporation
- Raymond Kurzweil -- inventor and entrepreneur in synthesized-music keyboards, OCR and speech-to-text processing
- Paul Krugman -- New York Times columnist, John Bates Clark Medal-winner
- Daniel Lewin -- founder of Akamai
- Arthur D. Little -- entrepreneur, founder of the eponymous management consulting firm in 1886
- Jack Little -- entrepreneur, co-founder of The MathWorks, which created and sells MATLAB
- Hugh Lofting -- author of "Dr. Doolittle" (trained at MIT as civil engineer, 1904-05)
- Ray Magliozzi -- radio personality (Car Talk)
- Tom Magliozzi -- radio personality (Car Talk)
- N. Gregory Mankiw -- Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors
- Hiram Percy Maxim - Inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
- James McDonnell -- co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- Robert Metcalfe - entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet
- Benjamin Netanyahu -- former Prime Minister of Israel
- David Nolan -- Founder of United States Libertarian Party
- Robert Noyce -- integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel
- Ken Olsen -- founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
- I. M. Pei -- architect
- Tom Perkins -- founder of VC firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
- Princess Ubol Ratana - of Thailand
- Allen Razdow -- founder of MathCad
- John S. Reed -- Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
- Willard Rockwell -- founder of Rockwell International
- John Thain -- Chief executive officer of the New York Stock Exchange
- Tom Scholz -- founder of the rock group Boston and Scholz R&D , manufacturers of Rockman sound equipment
- George P. Schultz -- United States Secretary of State
- Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. -- automobile entrepreneur, CEO of General Motors
- Raymond Stata -- founder of Analog Devices
- Louis Sullivan -- architect
- Lawrence H. Summers -- economist, president of Harvard University
- John E. Sununu -- United States Senator from New Hampshire
- Robert A. Swanson -- cofounder of Genentech
- Andrew Tanenbaum -- computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
- Andrew Viterbi -- founder of Qualcomm
- George W. Santos -- Pioneer in Bone Marrow Transplantation
Alumni Nobel laureates
- George Akerlof, Ph.D. 1966 -- Nobel laureate (economics, 2001)
- Sid Altman, S.B. 1960 -- Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1989)
- Kofi Annan, S.M. 1972 -- United Nations Secretary-General, Nobel laureate (Peace, 2001)
- Elias James Corey Jr., S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 -- Nobel laureate(Chemistry, 1990)
- Richard Feynman, S.B. 1939 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 1965)
- Leland H. Hartwell, Ph.D. 1964 -- Nobel laureate (Medicine/Physiology, 2001)
- H. Robert Horvitz, S.B. 1968 -- Nobel laureate (Physiology/Medicine, 2001)
- Henry Kendall, S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 1990)
- Lawrence Klein, Ph.D. 1944 -- Nobel laureate (Economics, 1980)
- Robert B. Laughlin, Ph.D. 1979 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 1998)
- Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D. 1951 -- physicist, Nobel laureate (Physics, 1969)
- Robert C. Merton, Ph.D. 1970 -- Nobel laureate (Economics, 1997)
- Robert S. Mulliken, S.B. 1917 -- Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1966)
- Robert Mundell, Ph.D. 1956 -- Nobel laureate (Economics, 1999)
- Charles Pedersen, S.M. 1927 -- Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1987)
- William D. Phillips, Ph.D. 1976, Nobel laureate (Physics 1997)
- Burton Richter, S.B. 1952, Ph.D. 1956 - Nobel laureate (1976, physics)
- John Robert Schrieffer, S.B. 1953 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 1972)
- William Shockley, Ph.D. 1936 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 1956)
- Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D. 1966 -- Nobel laureate (Economics, 2001)
- Carl E. Wieman, S.B. 1973 -- Nobel laureate (Physics, 2001)
- Robert Woodward, S.B. 1936 -- Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1965)
Alumni astronauts
- Buzz Aldrin, Ph.D. 1963
- Dominic Antonelli , BS 1989
- Jerome Apt, Ph.D. 1976
- Kenneth Cameron, S.B. 1978, MS 1979
- Gregory Chamitoff , Ph.D. 1992
- Franklin Chang-Diaz, Ph.D. 1977
- Phillip Chapman , S.M. 1964, Ph.D. 1967
- Catherine Coleman, S.B. 1983
- Timothy Creamer , S.M. 1992
- Charles Duke, S.M. 1964
- Anthony England, S.B. 1965, S.M. 1965, Ph.D. 1970
- Edward Fincke, S.B. 1989
- John Grunsfeld, S.B. 1980
- Terry Hart, S.M. 1969
- Frederick Hauck, S.M. 1966
- Wendy Lawrence, S.M. 1988
- Mark Lee, S.M. 1980
- William Lenoir, S.B. 1961, S.M. 1962, Ph.D. 1965
- Michael Massimino, S.M. 88, M.Eng. 1990, Ph.D. 1992
- Ronald McNair, Ph.D. 1976, killed in the Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-51-L in 1986
- Pamela Ann Melroy, S.M. 1984
- Edgar Mitchell, Ph.D. 1964
- Nicholas Patrick , S.M. 1990, Ph.D. 1996
- Russell Schweickart, S.B. 1956, S.M. 1963
- David Scott, S.M. 1962
- William Shepherd, S.M. 1978
- Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper , S.B. 1984, S.M. 1985
- Daniel Tani, S.B. 1984, S.M. 1985
- Janice Voss, S.M. 1977, Ph.D. 1978
- Neil Woodward , S.B. 1984
Fictional characters
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