List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology people
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This is a list of famous individuals associated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, including graduates, former students, and professors. See also: people at the Mathematics Department.
Contents
Prominent faculty members
A few distinguished members of the faculty have held the title of Institute Professor. These include:- Manson Benedict, nuclear engineering[link]
- Emilio Bizzi, brain and cognitive sciences[link]
- Noam Chomsky, most cited person in the world still living; inventor of the most common linguistics framework used today; inventor of the theory that enabled modern computer languages.
- Morris Cohen, materials science and engineering
- John M. Deutch, chemistry, former director of the CIA
- Peter Diamond, economics[link]
- 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[link]
- Chia-Chiao Lin, mathematics[link]
- John Little, management
- Francis Low, physics[link]
- Thomas Magnanti, EECS and management[link] (Listed as "Dean/Faculty")
- Philip Morrison, physics
- Joel Moses, EECS
- Paul Samuelson, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Ascher Shapiro, mechanical engineering (d. Nov. 26, 2004)[link]
- Phillip Sharp, biology[link], co-founder of Biogen, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Medicine
- Isadore Singer, mathematics
- Robert Solow, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Daniel Wang, chemical engineering[link]
- John Waugh, chemistry[link] (listed as "Professor Emeritus")
- Sheila E. Widnall, aerospace, Secretary of the Air Force
- Jerome Wiesner
- Hal Abelson — computer scientist
- Leo Beranek - cofounder of the pioneering telecommunications and Internet company Bolt, Beranek and Newman
- Tim Berners-Lee — inventor of the World Wide Web
- George Boolos — philosopher and mathematical logician
- Richard Bolt - cofounder of the pioneering telecommunications and Internet company Bolt, Beranek and Newman
- Amar G. Bose Ph.D. — 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
- John W. Dower — Historian of Japan, winner of a Pulitzer Prize
- Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton — former MIT EECS professor, co-founder and is the "E" of the defense contractor giant EG&G, photography pioneer.
- Kerry Emanuel — hurricanes
- Robert Engle — Nobel prize-winner, economics, former MIT Prof of Economics
- Jay W. Forrester — System Dynamics
- John R. Hauser, management
- Jim Hines — System Dynamics
- Henry W. Kendall — Nobel prize-winner, physicist
- Wolfgang Ketterle — Nobel prize-winner, physicist
- Eric Lander — geneticist, a principal leader of the Human Genome Project
- Walter Lewin — physicist
- J. C. R. Licklider — leader of the IPTO
- Alan Lightman — writer, physicist
- Andrew B. Lippman — Media Lab pioneer
- Robert Langer, Chemical Engineering
- Edward Lorenz, developed the Butterfly Effect theory
- John Maeda — artist, graphic designer, computer scientist
- Allan McCollum — contemporary artist
- William J. Mitchell — architect, writer, media guru
- Marvin Minsky — artificial intelligence guru
- Franco Modigliani — Nobel prize-winner, economist
- Mario Molina — Nobel prize-winner, chemistry, Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences
- John Nash — Nobel prize-winner, mathematician
- Nicholas Negroponte — OLPC project leader
- Seymour Papert — education & computers
- Alex (Sandy) Pentland — human-computer interaction and social networks
- Steven Pinker — cognitive scientist
- Theodore Postol - nuclear weapons expert and prominent critic of current ballistic missile defense systems
- Nelson Repenning — System Dynamics
- 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
- Ron Rivest — cryptographer, co-inventor of RSA, inventor of RC5, MD5 and several other cryptographic algorithms -- the most commonly used encryption technologies used today.
- 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
- Richard Schrock — Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2005
- Myron S. Scholes — Nobel prize-winner, economist
- Peter Senge — Learning Organizations
- Claude E. Shannon M.S., Ph.D. - inventor of information theory
- George P. Shultz — United States Secretary of Labor, Treasury, and State. Former Professor at both the MIT Department of Economics and the Sloan School. Earned a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1949.
- 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 and recipient of a McArthur Foundation fellowship.
- Robert Stalnaker, philosopher, linguist
- John Sterman — System Dynamics
- Dirk Jan Struik — mathematician and historian of mathematics
- Gerald Sussman — co-inventor of Scheme, research in artificial intelligence, computer languages, and orbital mechanics
- Ivan Sutherland — computer graphics pioneer
- Susumu Tonegawa — molecular biologist, 1987 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine
- Sherry Turkle — clinical psychologist and sociologist
- Eric von Hippel — economist and behavioral theorist
- Joseph Weizenbaum — computer scientist
- Norbert Wiener — mathematician
- Frank Wilczek, physicist, Nobel prize in Physics
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
- Joseph Alsop - cofounder of Progress Software, the largest software company based in Massachusetts
- Virgilio Barco - former Colombian president
- Steve Altes — humorist, National Medal of Technology recipient
- Kofi Annan — Secretary-General of the United Nations
- Pedro Aspe Armella — Mexican Secretary of Finance, Ph.D. (Economics) 1978
- Les Aspin— US Congressman from Wisconsin, Clinton's first Secretary of Defense, Ph.D. (Economics) 1966
- Ben Bernanke - current Chair of the Federal Reserve, Ph.D. (Economics) 1979
- Richard Barry - cofounder of Sycamore Networks
- Gordon Bell - computer engineer and manager, designer of the DEC PDP and manager of the VAX project.
- Harry Binswanger — philosopher, associate of Ayn Rand
- 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
- Samuel Bodman - current Secretary of Energy (2005-present)
- Dan Bricklin — co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program
- Idit Harel Capelton - educational psychologist and epistomologist
- Richard Carrion — Chief Executive Officer of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, and of Popular, Inc.
- Ahmed Chalabi — controversial Iraqi politician, now currently deputy prime minister of Iraq
- Morris Chang - Chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) , the largest semiconductor foundry in the world
- Jun Choi — Mayor of Edison, New Jersey
- Joseph Chung - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Jeet Singh
- Wen Tsing Chow — missile guidance scientist and digital computer pioneer
- David D. Clark - led the development of TCP/IP -- the protocol that underlies the Internet
- Wesley A. Clark - computing pioneer, creator of the LINC (the first minicomputer)
- Ogden Codman, Jr. — architect and interior designer
- Jared Cohon — president of Carnegie Mellon
- Fernando Corbato - Professor at MIT, Turing Award winner of 1990, co-founder of the Multics project
- Csaba Csere — automotive journalist, editor of Car and Driver
- Peter Denning -Computer scientists, co-founder of the Multics project
- Jack Dennis - Professor at MIT until 1987, co-founder of the Multics project.
- Nick DeWolf - co-founder of Teradyne with Alex d'Arbeloff
- Whitfield Diffie — pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
- Jimmy Doolittle — Aeronautical engineer and U.S. Air Force general
- Donald Douglas — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- John Dorrance - founder of the Campbell Soup Company
- K. Eric Drexler — nanotechnologist
- Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton — former MIT EECS professor, co-founder and is the "E" of the defense contractor giant EG&G, photography pioneer.
- Farouk El-Baz — Supervisor of Lunar Science Planning, Apollo Program, NASA
- Luis A. Ferré — governor of Puerto Rico
- José Figueres Ferrer — president of Costa Rica
- Carl Feynman — son of the physicist Richard Feynman
- Richard Feynman — Nobel-prize winning physicist
- Carly Fiorina — Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
- Shantanurao Laxmanrao Kirloskar — founder of Kirloskar Group
- William Clay Ford, Jr. — Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company
- Victor Kwok-king Fung — prominent Hong Kong billionaire businessman and political figure
- Eugenio Garza Sada - Mexican businessman, philantropist and founder of the Tec de Monterrey (ITESM).
- Arthur Gelb - co-founder, former CEO and former Chair or TASC
- Kenneth Germeshausen - co-founder and the 1st 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G, which is now part of the URS Corporation
- Jim Gettys — one of the original developers of XWindows, former director of GNOME.
- Bill Gosper — one of the founders of the original hacker community, originator of hashlife
- Mark Gorenberg - partner of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
- Cecil H. Green - co-founder of Texas Instruments
- Herbert Grier- co-founder and the 2nd 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G, which is now part of the URS Corporation
- George Ellery Hale - astronomer
- George Hatsopoulos - founder of Thermo Electron Corporation
- Nathanael Herreshoff — naval architect-engineer, yacht designer
- 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
- C.D. Howe - Canadian politician and cabinet minister
- David A. Huffman — computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
- Jerome C. Hunsaker - pioneering aeronautical engineer
- Shirley Jackson (physicist) - prominent African-American physicist and president of RPI
- Irwin M. Jacobs - co-founder of Qualcomm with Andrew Viterbi, current chairman and former CEO. Former MIT professor (1959-1966)
- William Jeffrey - 13th Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Martin C. Jischke — President of Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN
- Larry Kahn — tiddlywinks champion
- Brewster Kahle — internet archivist
- Mitch Kapor — software entrepreneur, founder of Lotus Corporation
- Steve Kirsch — inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation (the original company behind FrameMaker), founder of Infoseek Corporation
- Leonard Kleinrock - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET
- Charles Koch - Co-owner, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, the largest private company in the US
- David H. Koch - Co-Owner (with brother Charles Koch of Koch Industries. Vice-Presidential Candidate for the Libertarian Party.
- Pentti Kouri — economist and investor
- Paul Krugman — New York Times columnist, John Bates Clark Medal-winner, PhD (economics)
- Raymond Kurzweil — inventor and entrepreneur in synthesized-music keyboards, OCR and speech-to-text processing
- Leslie Lamport - Computing pioneer on temporal logic, developer of LaTeX
- Jay Last - One of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Co-founder of Amelco, which became Teledyne
- 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)
- Edward Lovett — Architect
- Ray Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
- Tom Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
- N. Gregory Mankiw — Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors PhD (Economics)
- Hiram Percy Maxim — Inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
- Mark McClellan - head of Medicare and Medicaid, former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Katharine Dexter McCormick — biologist, suffragette, funded research for The Pill
- James McDonnell — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- Patrick McGovern — founder of IDG/Computerworld
- David McGrath - founder of TAD resources, employing over 30k people, [link], now part of the human resources giant Adecco
- Douglas McIllroy - mathematician and engineer, an original developer of UNIX, member of the National Academy of Engineering
- Dana Mead - former CEO and Chair of Tenneco
- Steve Meretzky - computer game designer
- Robert Metcalfe — entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet
- David Miliband — British politician, cabinet minister for Communities and Local Government
- Charles Murray — researcher and co-author of The Bell Curve
- Mohammad Ali Najafi — former Vice President of Iran[link]
- Stewart Nelson - founder of System Concepts
- Benjamin Netanyahu — former Prime Minister of Israel
- William Emery Nickerson - founder of Gillette, now part of Procter & Gamble
- David Nolan — Founder of United States Libertarian Party
- Robert Noyce — integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel
- Piermaria Oddone - director of Fermilab
- Ken Olsen — founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
- Neil Pappalardo - founder of Medical Information Technology Inc. (Meditech)
- I. M. Pei — architect
- Alan Perlis - Computer scientist, winner of the first Turing Award in 1966.
- Radia Perlman - Computer Scientist, inventor of numerous data networking technologies, dubbed 'Mother of the Internet'
- Tom Perkins — founder of VC firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
- William Poduska - Computer engineer and entrepreneur, founder of Prime Computer and Apollo Computers
- Generoso Pope - business magnate, founder/owner of The National Inquirer
- Princess Ubol Ratana - of Thailand
- William Porter — Founder of E*TRADE
- Allen Razdow — founder of Mathsoft Inc. & inventor of Mathcad
- John S. Reed — Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
- Larry Roberts - Internet pioneer and businessman, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET, cofounder of Caspian Networks and Packetcom, former CEO of DHL
- Sheldon Roberts - one of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Co-founder of Amelco which later became Teledyne.
- Willard Rockwell — founder of Rockwell International
- Steve Russell — creator of the first videogame Spacewar!
- Jeff Sagarin — sports statistician
- Jerome Saltzer - MIT EECS professor (1966-1995) and computing pioneer, co-founder of the Multics project, Director of Project Athena
- Arthur Samberg - Chairman of Pequot Capital Management
- George W. Santos — Pioneer in bone marrow transplantation
- Michael J. Saylor - Founder of MicroStrategy
- Tom Scholz — founder of the rock group Boston and Scholz Research & Development, Inc., manufacturers of Rockman sound equipment
- Bob Scheifler - computer scientist, leader of the X Window System project, architect of Jini
- Ed Seykota - Pioneering Commodity Trader
- Jim Simons - mathematician and philanthropist. Founder of Renaissance Technologies, one of the world's most successful hedge funds.
- Henry Singleton - founder of Teledyne
- Jeet Singh - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Joseph Chung
- Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. — automobile entrepreneur, CEO of General Motors
- Ellen Spertus - Named "Sexiest Geek Alive"
- Ray 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
- John H. Sununu - Chief of Staff under President George H.W. Bush, 3-term Governor of New Hampshire, host of Crossfire
- Ivan Sutherland - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of original designers of the original ARPANET, Turing Award winner of 1988.
- Eric Swanson - Cofounder of Sycamore Networks
- Robert A. Swanson — cofounder of Genentech
- Andrew Tanenbaum — computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
- John Thain — Chief executive officer of the New York Stock Exchange
- Laura D'Andrea Tyson - Chairman of the CEA under Clinton. Former dean of the Haas School of Business. Current Dean of the London Business School
- Erland Van Lidth De Jeude — Hollywood actor and opera singer
- Hal Varian - economist, founding dean of the School of Information at UC Berkeley
- Milen Veltchev — Bulgarian financial minister (2001-2005)
- Andrew Viterbi — inventor of the Viterbi algorithm and cofounder of Qualcomm
- Philippe Villers - founder of Computervision, which is now part of Parametric Technology Corporation
- Harry Mohr Weese - architect & historic preservation advocate
- Martin Weinstein - founder of Tyco International
- Dr. F. Helmut Weymar - Founder of Commodities Corporation
- Uncas Whitaker - founder of AMP Incorporated, employing over 28000 people [link], now a division of Tyco International
- Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, beginning in January, 2006
- Robert Winters - Canadian politician
- James Woods — actor (dropped out)
- Stefano Young — Bass player for House of Kabob
- Edward Yourdon- computer pioneer, popularized the term Y2K Bug
- Pavel Krapivin - Cofounder of Doostang.com
- Rigoberto Omar Romero Martínez - former Honduras Subsecretary of Planning (1984) and Subscretary of Trasportation and Public Works (1985).
Alumni
- George Akerlof, Ph.D. 1966 — Nobel laureate (economics, 2001)
- Robert Aumann, S.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1955 — Nobel laureate (economics, 2005)
- 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)
- Eric Cornell, Ph.D. 1990 — Nobel laureate (Physics, 2001)
- 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, 2002)
- Henry W. 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 Burns Woodward, S.B. 1936 — Nobel laureate (Chemistry, 1965)
Alumni astronauts
- Buzz Aldrin, Sc.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, Sc.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, dual 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 B. Lenoir, S.B. 1961, S.M. 1962, Ph.D. 1965
- Michael Massimino, dual S.M. 88, Mechanical Engineer 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, Sc.D. 1964
- Nicholas Patrick, S.M. 1990, Ph.D. 1996
- Russell Schweickart, S.B. 1956, S.M. 1963
- David Scott, S.M., E.A.A. (Engineer in Aeronautics/Astronautics degree) 1962
- William Shepherd, S.M. 1978, Ocean Engineer 1978
- Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, S.B. 1984, S.M. 1985
- Daniel Tani, S.B. 1984, S.M. 1985
- Robert Thirsk, S.M. 1978, M.B.A. 1998
- Janice Voss, S.M. 1977, Ph.D. 1978
- Neil Woodward, S.B. 1984
Fictional characters
- Jack Florey
- Stanley Brack
- Gordon Freeman — fictional physicist of Half-Life
- David Levinson, Independence Day - Manager at NYC cable station, degree in computer science.
- The man who ran the computer in the Brothers Four song, John Henry, The Thinkin' Man [link]
- Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting - Savant on-campus janitor
- James Clayton, The Recruit - NSA trainee, degree in "non-linear cryptography"
- Ben Chapleski, Orgazmo
- Rockhound, Armageddon - Geologist with two MIT doctorates in Chemistry and Geology
- Ellie Arroway, Contact - SETI researcher
- Benjamin Gates, National Treasure (2004)
- Otacon, Metal Gear Solid -
- Mike Cannon- Las Vegas
- Darcy - Secretary in The Loop
- Richard Sumner, Desk Set - A "PhD from MIT in Science"
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