History of science

MIT Black History Project launches new website

Digital archive features never-before-published image of MIT's first black woman student.

February 21, 2018

Left to right: Rania Ghosn, Rosalind Williams, and Caroline Jones joined guest lecturer Imre Szeman for a panel discussion after his talk on ways to shift from “petroculture.”

Energy transition through aesthetics and culture

MIT Energy Initiative seminar examines the role of the humanities, design, and aesthetics in catalyzing a fairer, more diverse energy future.

October 24, 2017

Rainer Weiss at home early this morning, after learning that he has won the 2017 Nobel Prize in physics.

MIT physicist Rainer Weiss shares Nobel Prize in physics

LIGO inventor and professor emeritus of physics recognized “for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves.”

October 3, 2017

Left to right: Matthew Nicolai, Dallace Francis, and Christian Argenti, MIT seniors in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and members of the fraternity Delta Kappa Epsom, took the MIT History seminar, People and Other Animals, together.

Entering the animal world

In a history seminar, engineering students explore shifting ideas about animal intelligence and human uses of animals throughout the ages.

May 19, 2017

"The new frontier is learning how to design the relationships between people, robots, and infrastructure," says David Mindell, the Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, and a professor of aeronautics and astronautics. "We need new sensors, new software, new ways of architecting systems."

Q&A: On the future of human-centered robotics

Professor David Mindell, who researches the interaction between automation and human behavior, discusses the interdependence of people, robots, and infrastructure.

May 15, 2017

Most applications of deep learning use “convolutional” neural networks, in which the nodes of each layer are clustered, the clusters overlap, and each cluster feeds data to multiple nodes (orange and green) of the next layer.

Explained: Neural networks

Ballyhooed artificial-intelligence technique known as “deep learning” revives 70-year-old idea.

April 14, 2017

Tim Berners-Lee was honored with the Turing Award for his work inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and "the fundamental protocols and algorithms [that allowed] the web to scale."

Tim Berners-Lee wins $1 million Turing Award

CSAIL researcher honored for inventing the web and developing the protocols that spurred its global use.

April 4, 2017

Institute Professor Emerita Mildred Dresselhaus, a pioneer in the electronic properties of materials, dies at 86

“Queen of carbon science” and recipient of Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Science led US scientific community, promoted women in STEM.

February 21, 2017

Celebrating Pauline Morrow Austin, a founder of radar meteorology

MIT faculty, friends, and family gathered to remember Austin's life and commemorate her contributions to science with the unveiling of an exhibit in EAPS.

January 31, 2017