Misplaced Pages

#100899

99-737: Brookhaven National Laboratory ( BNL ) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, New York , a hamlet of the Town of Brookhaven . It was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton , a former U.S. Army base on Long Island . Located approximately 60 miles east of New York City , it is managed by Stony Brook University and Battelle Memorial Institute . Research at BNL includes nuclear and high energy physics, energy science and technology, environmental and bioscience, nanoscience, and national security. The 5,300 acre campus contains several large research facilities, including

198-442: A towing tank for testing ship and ocean structure designs, and previously Alcator C-Mod , which was the largest fusion device operated by any university. MIT's campus-wide wireless network was completed in the fall of 2005 and consists of nearly 3,000 access points covering 9.4 × 10 ^  sq ft (870,000 m ) of campus. The campus' primary energy source is natural gas. In connection with capital campaigns to expand

297-401: A "technological" research university and to build more autonomy from private industry. In the 1930s, President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost ) Vannevar Bush emphasized the importance of pure sciences like physics and chemistry and reduced the vocational practice required in shops and drafting studios. The Compton reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of

396-590: A dense high-rise transit-oriented development plan. The MIT Museum has moved immediately adjacent to a Kendall Square subway entrance, joining the List Visual Arts Center on the eastern end of the campus. Each building at MIT has a number (possibly preceded by a W , N , E , or NW ) designation, and most have a name as well. Typically, academic and office buildings are referred to primarily by number while residence halls are referred to by name. The organization of building numbers roughly corresponds to

495-543: A desperate search for a new campus and funding. Eventually, the MIT Corporation approved a formal agreement to merge with Harvard and move to Allston, over the vehement objections of MIT faculty, students, and alumni. The merger plan collapsed in 1905 when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules that MIT could not sell its Back Bay land. In 1912, MIT acquired its current campus by purchasing

594-647: A first for a non-industrial – much less university – building in the US. Bosworth's design was influenced by the City Beautiful Movement of the early 1900s and features the Pantheon -esque Great Dome housing the Barker Engineering Library. The Great Dome overlooks Killian Court, where graduation ceremonies are held each year. The friezes of the limestone-clad buildings around Killian Court are engraved with

693-587: A full service fire department, and has its own ZIP code (11973). In total, the lab spans a 5,265-acre (21 km) area that is mostly coterminous with the hamlet of Upton, New York . BNL is served by a rail spur operated as-needed by the New York and Atlantic Railway . Co-located with the laboratory is the New York, NY, weather forecast office of the National Weather Service . Although originally conceived as

792-520: A mile along the north side of the Charles River basin. The campus is divided roughly in half by Massachusetts Avenue , with most dormitories and student life facilities to the west and most academic buildings to the east. The bridge closest to MIT is the Harvard Bridge , which is known for being marked off in a non-standard unit of length – the smoot . The Kendall/MIT MBTA Red Line station

891-485: A modest fee. The " edX " online platform supporting MITx was initially developed in partnership with Harvard and its analogous "Harvardx" initiative. The courseware platform is open source, and other universities have already joined and added their own course content. In March 2009 the MIT faculty adopted an open-access policy to make its scholarship publicly accessible online. MIT has its own police force. Three days after

990-496: A new Schwarzman College of Computing dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, named after lead donor and The Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman . The focus of the new college is to study not just AI, but interdisciplinary AI education, and how AI can be used in fields as diverse as history and biology. The cost of buildings and new faculty for the new college is expected to be $ 1 billion upon completion. The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)

1089-540: A nonprofit corporation was established that consisted of representatives from nine major research universities — Columbia , Cornell , Harvard , Johns Hopkins , MIT , Princeton , University of Pennsylvania , University of Rochester , and Yale University . Out of 17 considered sites in the Boston-Washington corridor, Camp Upton on Long Island was eventually chosen as the most suitable in consideration of space, transportation, and availability. The camp had been

SECTION 10

#1732845300101

1188-558: A nuclear research facility, Brookhaven Lab's mission has greatly expanded. Its foci are now: Brookhaven National Lab was originally owned by the Atomic Energy Commission and is now owned by that agency's successor, the United States Department of Energy (DOE). DOE subcontracts the research and operation to universities and research organizations. It is currently operated by Brookhaven Science Associates LLC, which

1287-666: A one-mile (1.6 km) tract of filled lands along the Cambridge side of the Charles River. The neoclassical "New Technology" campus was designed by William W. Bosworth and had been funded largely by anonymous donations from a mysterious "Mr. Smith", starting in 1912. In January 1920, the donor was revealed to be the industrialist George Eastman , an inventor of film production methods and founder of Eastman Kodak . Between 1912 and 1920, Eastman donated $ 20 million ($ 304.2 million in 2024 dollars) in cash and Kodak stock to MIT. In 1916, with

1386-405: A polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, and along with this, a full and methodical review of all their leading processes and operations in connection with physical laws. The Rogers Plan reflected

1485-684: A recurring problem for DOE management. Since 1993, DOE has spent more than US$ 580 million on remediating soil and groundwater contamination at the lab site and completed several high-profile projects. These include the decommissioning and decontamination of the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor, removal of mercury-contaminated sediment from the Peconic River, and installation and operation of 16 on- and off-site groundwater treatment systems that have cleaned more than 25 billion gallons of groundwater since 1996. Shortly after winning

1584-688: A role in a range of neutrino research projects around the world, including the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in China and the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . For other than approved Public Events, the Laboratory is closed to the general public. The lab is open to the public on several Sundays during the summer for tours and special programs. The public access program

1683-421: A special type of educational institution which can be defined as a university polarized around science, engineering, and the arts. We might call it a university limited in its objectives but unlimited in the breadth and the thoroughness with which it pursues these objectives. —MIT president James Rhyne Killian These activities affected MIT profoundly. A 1949 report noted the lack of "any great slackening in

1782-529: A training center for the US Army during both World War I and World War II , and a Japanese internment camp during the latter. Following the war, Camp Upton was no longer needed, and a plan was conceived to convert the military camp into a research facility. On March 21, 1947, the Camp Upton site was officially transferred from the U.S. War Department to the new U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), predecessor to

1881-586: A transportation technology that utilizes magnetic levitation . It is a contributing partner to ATLAS experiment , one of the four detectors located at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It is currently operating at CERN near Geneva , Switzerland. Brookhaven was also responsible for the design of the SNS accumulator ring in partnership with Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, Tennessee . Brookhaven plays

1980-487: Is a large, highly residential, research university with a majority of enrollments in graduate and professional programs. The university has been accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges since 1929. MIT operates on a 4–1–4 academic calendar with the fall semester beginning after Labor Day and ending in mid-December, a 4-week "Independent Activities Period" in the month of January, and

2079-500: Is an equal partnership of Stony Brook University and Battelle Memorial Institute . From 1947 to 1998, it was operated by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), but AUI lost its contract in the wake of two incidents: a 1994 fire at the facility's high-flux beam reactor that exposed several workers to radiation and reports in 1997 of a tritium leak into the groundwater of the Long Island Central Pine Barrens on which

SECTION 20

#1732845300101

2178-571: Is housed in a tunnel 2.4 miles (3.9 km) long and is visible from space. On January 9, 2020, It was announced by Paul Dabbar, undersecretary of the US Department of Energy Office of Science, that the BNL eRHIC design has been selected over the conceptual design put forward by Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility as the future Electron–ion collider (EIC) in the United States. In addition to

2277-582: Is located on the northeastern edge of the campus, in Kendall Square . The Cambridge neighborhoods surrounding MIT are a mixture of high tech companies occupying both modern office and rehabilitated industrial buildings, as well as socio-economically diverse residential neighborhoods. In early 2016, MIT presented its updated Kendall Square Initiative to the City of Cambridge, with plans for mixed-use educational, retail, residential, startup incubator, and office space in

2376-523: Is referred to as 'Summer Sundays' and takes place in July, and features a science show and a tour of the lab's major facilities. The laboratory also hosts science fairs, science bowls, and robotics competitions for local schools, and lectures, concerts, and scientific talks for the local community. The Lab estimates that each year it enhances the science education of roughly 35,000 K-12 students on Long Island, more than 200 undergraduates, and 550 teachers from across

2475-459: Is the largest research facility of its kind in the nation. With a cost of US$ 400 million, it is also one of the costliest buildings on campus. The facility also provides state-of-the-art nanoimaging capabilities with vibration damped imaging and metrology suites sitting atop a 5 × 10 ^  lb (2,300,000 kg) slab of concrete underground. Other notable campus facilities include a pressurized wind tunnel for testing aerodynamic research,

2574-463: Is the largest taxpayer in the city, contributing approximately 14% of the city's annual revenues. Holdings include Technology Square , parts of Kendall Square , University Park , and many properties in Cambridgeport and Area 4 neighboring the main campus. The land is held for investment purposes and potential long-term expansion. MIT's School of Architecture , founded in 1865 and now called

2673-403: Is widely conceived as basically a vocational school", a "partly unjustified" perception the committee sought to change. The report comprehensively reviewed the undergraduate curriculum, recommended offering a broader education, and warned against letting engineering and government-sponsored research detract from the sciences and humanities. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and

2772-556: The Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and the Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer video games like Spacewar! and created much of modern hacker slang and culture. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s: Richard Stallman 's GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at

2871-536: The Boston Marathon bombing of April 2013, MIT Police patrol officer Sean Collier was fatally shot by the suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev , setting off a violent manhunt that shut down the campus and much of the Boston metropolitan area for a day. One week later, Collier's memorial service was attended by more than 10,000 people, in a ceremony hosted by the MIT community with thousands of police officers from

2970-600: The Brookhaven Medical Research Reactor , which operated until 2000. In 1952 Brookhaven began using its first particle accelerator , the Cosmotron . At the time the Cosmotron was the world's highest energy accelerator, being the first to impart more than 1 GeV of energy to a particle. The Cosmotron was retired in 1966, after it was superseded in 1960 by the new Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS). The AGS

3069-569: The German research university model , emphasizing an independent faculty engaged in research, as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories. Two days after MIT was chartered, the first battle of the Civil War broke out. After a long delay through the war years, MIT's first classes were held in the Mercantile Building in Boston in 1865. The new institute was founded as part of

Brookhaven National Laboratory - Misplaced Pages Continue

3168-779: The MIT Lincoln Laboratory , the Bates Center, and the Haystack Observatory , as well as affiliated laboratories such as the Broad and Whitehead Institutes . As of October 2024 , 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

3267-500: The MIT Sloan School of Management were formed in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering . Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics, management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors and launching competitive graduate programs. The School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences continued to develop under

3366-661: The Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes" and was a land-grant school. In 1863 under the same act, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Agricultural College , which developed as the University of Massachusetts Amherst . In 1866, the proceeds from land sales went toward new buildings in

3465-908: The National Defense Research Committee , and later the Office of Scientific Research and Development , organized and administered by Vannevar Bush . During the Second World War, centralized sites such as the Radiation Laboratory at MIT and Ernest O. Lawrence 's laboratory at Berkeley and the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago allowed for a large number of expert scientists to collaborate towards defined goals as never before, and with government resources of unprecedented scale at their disposal. In

3564-548: The One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005. MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several successful development campaigns to significantly expand

3663-515: The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider and National Synchrotron Light Source II . Seven Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work conducted at Brookhaven Lab. BNL operations are overseen by a Department of Energy Site office, is staffed by approximately 2,750 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel, and hosts 4,000 guest investigators every year. The laboratory is guarded by a Department of Energy Protective Force, has

3762-499: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 1947 construction began on the first nuclear reactor at Brookhaven, the Brookhaven Graphite Research Reactor . This reactor, which opened in 1950, was the first reactor to be constructed in the United States after World War II. The High Flux Beam Reactor operated from 1965 to 1999. In 1959 Brookhaven built the first US reactor specifically tailored to medical research,

3861-541: The governor of Massachusetts , on April 10, 1861. Rogers, who was educated at the College of William & Mary and later held professorships at both William & Mary and the University of Virginia , wanted to establish an institution to address rapid scientific and technological advances. He did not wish to found a professional school , but a combination with elements of both professional and liberal education , proposing that: The true and only practicable object of

3960-458: The physical sciences . 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 . Founded in response to the increasing industrialization of

4059-462: The "Technology Plan" in 1920. As MIT grew under the Tech Plan, it built new postgraduate programs that stressed laboratory work on industry problems, including a new program in electrical engineering. Gerard Swope , MIT's chairman and head of General Electric , believed talented engineers needed scientific research training. In 1930, he recruited Karl Taylor Compton to helm MIT's transformation as

Brookhaven National Laboratory - Misplaced Pages Continue

4158-507: The 1980s, there was more controversy at MIT over its involvement in SDI (space weaponry) and CBW (chemical and biological warfare) research. More recently, MIT's research for the military has included work on robots, drones and 'battle suits'. MIT has kept pace with and helped to advance the digital age. In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at Project MAC ,

4257-707: The AI Lab; the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology; the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee ; the OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 2,000 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002; and

4356-546: The Back Bay. MIT was informally called "Boston Tech". The institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. Despite chronic financial problems, the institute saw growth in the last two decades of the 19th century under President Francis Amasa Walker . Programs in electrical, chemical, marine, and sanitary engineering were introduced, new buildings were built, and

4455-568: The Boston area's classical architecture and serve as examples of contemporary campus " starchitecture ". These buildings have not always been well received; in 2010, The Princeton Review included MIT in a list of twenty schools whose campuses are "tiny, unsightly, or both". Undergraduates are guaranteed four-year housing in one of MIT's 11 undergraduate dormitories. Those living on campus can receive support and mentoring from live-in graduate student tutors, resident advisors, and faculty housemasters. Because housing assignments are made based on

4554-534: The ISABELLE accelerator brought the project to a halt, and the project was eventually cancelled in 1983. The National Synchrotron Light Source operated from 1982 to 2014 and was involved with two Nobel Prize-winning discoveries. It has since been replaced by the National Synchrotron Light Source II . After ISABELLE'S cancellation, physicist at BNL proposed that the excavated tunnel and parts of

4653-593: The Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering". Unlike Ivy League schools, MIT catered more to middle-class families, and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants for its funding. The school was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934. Still, as late as 1949, the Lewis Committee lamented in its report on the state of education at MIT that "the Institute

4752-504: The LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves, two Caltech physicists, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish , and MIT physicist Rainer Weiss won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2017. Weiss, who is also an MIT graduate, designed the laser interferometric technique, which served as the essential blueprint for the LIGO. In April of 2024, MIT students joined other campuses across

4851-515: The MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo), a subsidiary of the MIT Corporation created in 2004. A minor revenue source for much of the Institute's history, the endowment's role in MIT operations has grown due to strong investment returns since the 1990s, making it one the largest endowments held by American universities . Among its holdings are a majority of shares in the audio equipment manufacturer Bose Corporation . MIT

4950-602: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Acts of 1861, Chapter 183 In 1859, a proposal was submitted to the Massachusetts General Court to use newly filled lands in Back Bay , Boston for a " Conservatory of Art and Science ", but the proposal failed. A charter for the incorporation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed by William Barton Rogers , was signed by John Albion Andrew ,

5049-616: The Media Lab, the Sloan School's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest. In 2006, President Hockfield launched the MIT Energy Research Council to investigate the interdisciplinary challenges posed by increasing global energy consumption . In 2001, inspired by the open source and open access movements , MIT launched OpenCourseWare to make the lecture notes, problem sets , syllabi, exams, and lectures from

SECTION 50

#1732845300101

5148-522: The New England region and Canada. On November 25, 2013, MIT announced the creation of the Collier Medal, to be awarded annually to "an individual or group that embodies the character and qualities that Officer Collier exhibited as a member of the MIT community and in all aspects of his life". The announcement further stated that "Future recipients of the award will include those whose contributions exceed

5247-519: The School of Architecture and Planning, was the first formal architecture program in the United States, and it has a history of commissioning progressive buildings. The first buildings constructed on the Cambridge campus, completed in 1916, are sometimes called the "Maclaurin buildings" after Institute president Richard Maclaurin who oversaw their construction. Designed by William Welles Bosworth , these imposing buildings were built of reinforced concrete ,

5346-532: The US Air Force , and 1 foreign head of state have been affiliated with MIT. The institute also has a strong entrepreneurial culture and MIT alumni have founded or co-founded many notable companies. MIT is a member of the Association of American Universities . [...] a school of industrial science aiding the advancement, development and practical application of science in connection with arts, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce [...] Act to Incorporate

5445-442: The United States , MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering . MIT is one of three private land-grant universities in the United States, the others being Cornell University and Tuskegee University . The institute has an urban campus that extends more than a mile (1.6 km) alongside the Charles River , and operates off-campus facilities including

5544-623: The United States in protests and setting up encampments against the Israel–Hamas war . Student likened their actions to the historic protests against the American invasion of  Vietnam and MIT investment’s in South African apartheid ; they called for ending ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense . MIT's 166-acre (67.2 ha) campus in the city of Cambridge spans approximately

5643-474: The United States. In January 1997, ground water samples taken by BNL staff revealed concentrations of tritium that were twice the allowable federal drinking water standards—some samples taken later were 32 times the standard. The tritium was found to be leaking from the laboratory's High Flux Beam Reactor's spent-fuel pool into the aquifer that provides drinking water for nearby Suffolk County residents. DOE's and BNL's investigation of this incident concluded that

5742-408: The arts and sciences. In 2010, it was dubbed "most selective" by U.S. News , admitting few transfer students and 4.1% of its applicants in the 2020–2021 admissions cycle. It is need-blind for both domestic and international applicants. MIT offers 44 undergraduate degrees across its five schools. In the 2017–2018 academic year, 1,045 Bachelor of Science degrees (abbreviated " SB ") were granted,

5841-530: The associated instruments and work with visiting scientists to mount experiments with them. This access and support is provided without charge to qualified scientific groups, with priority based on recommendations by expert review panels. All six research offices support scientific user facilities at national laboratories. Facility for atmospheric observations Facility for environmental molecular sciences Facility for integrative genomic science The system of national laboratories started with

5940-467: The boundaries of their profession, those who have contributed to building bridges across the community, and those who consistently and selflessly perform acts of kindness". In September 2017, the school announced the creation of an artificial intelligence research lab called the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab. IBM will spend $ 240 million over the next decade, and the lab will be staffed by MIT and IBM scientists. In October 2018 MIT announced that it would open

6039-679: The budget, new programs, degrees and faculty appointments, and elects a president to manage the university and preside over the Institute's faculty. The current president is Sally Kornbluth , a cell biologist and former provost at Duke University , who became MIT's eighteenth president in January 2023. MIT has five schools ( Science , Engineering , Architecture and Planning , Management , and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences ) and one college ( Schwarzman College of Computing ), but no schools of law or medicine. While faculty committees assert substantial control over many areas of MIT's curriculum, research, student life, and administrative affairs,

SECTION 60

#1732845300101

6138-636: The campus, the Institute has also extensively renovated existing buildings to improve their energy efficiency. MIT has also taken steps to reduce its environmental impact by running alternative fuel campus shuttles, subsidizing public transportation passes , constructing solar power offsets , and building a cogeneration plant to power campus electricity, heating, and cooling requirements. MIT has substantial commercial real estate holdings in Cambridge on which it pays property taxes , plus an additional voluntary payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) on academic buildings which are legally tax-exempt. As of 2017 , it

6237-430: The campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus; the Tang Center for Management Education ; several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology , brain and cognitive sciences , genomics , biotechnology , and cancer research ; and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center . Construction on campus in the 2000s included expansions of

6336-439: The chair of each of MIT's 32 academic departments reports to the dean of that department's school, who in turn reports to the Provost under the President. Academic departments are also evaluated by "Visiting Committees," specialized bodies of Corporation members and outside experts who review the performance, activities, and needs of each department. MIT's endowment , real estate, and other financial assets are managed through by

6435-422: The community, and works to provide consensus recommendations to Laboratory management. United States Department of Energy national laboratories The DOE is the nation's largest sponsor of research in the physical sciences and engineering, and is second to the Department of Defense in supporting computer sciences and mathematics. Most of that research is performed by the national laboratories. Although

6534-535: The contract to operate the lab in 1997, BSA formed a Community Advisory Council (CAC) to advise the laboratory director on cleanup projects and other items of interest to the community. The CAC represents a diverse range of interests and values of individuals and groups who are interested in or affected by the actions of the Laboratory. It consists of representatives from 26 local business, civic, education, environment, employee, government, and health organizations. The CAC sets its own agenda, brings forth issues important to

6633-437: The country gathered at MIT's Radiation Laboratory , established in 1940 to assist the British military in developing microwave radar . The work done there significantly affected both the war and subsequent research in the area. Other defense projects included gyroscope -based and other complex control systems for gunsight , bombsight , and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper 's Instrumentation Laboratory ;

6732-407: The course of the war, the Allied nuclear effort, the Manhattan Project , created several secret sites for the purpose of bomb research and material development, including a laboratory in the mountains of New Mexico directed by Robert Oppenheimer ( Los Alamos ), and sites at Hanford, Washington and Oak Ridge, Tennessee . Hanford and Oak Ridge were administered by private companies, and Los Alamos

6831-423: The departure of the Manhattan Project from its campus. Their effort to house this reactor near New York City was rivalled by a similar effort at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to have a facility near Boston . Involvement was quickly solicited from representatives of northeastern universities to the south and west of New York City such that this city would be at their geographic center. In March 1946

6930-619: The development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind ; and high-speed and high-altitude photography under Harold Edgerton . By the end of the war, MIT became the nation's largest wartime R&D contractor (attracting some criticism of Bush), employing nearly 4000 in the Radiation Laboratory alone and receiving in excess of $ 100 million ($ 1.2 billion in 2015 dollars) before 1946. Work on defense projects continued even after then. Post-war government-sponsored research at MIT included SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo . ...

7029-553: The dormitory system starting in 2002. Because FSILGs had previously housed as many as 300 freshmen off-campus, the new policy could not be implemented until Simmons Hall opened in that year. In 2013–2014, MIT abruptly closed and then demolished undergrad dorm Bexley Hall, citing extensive water damage that made repairs infeasible. In 2017, MIT shut down Senior House after a century of service as an undergrad dorm. That year, MIT administrators released data showing just 60% of Senior House residents had graduated in four years. Campus-wide,

7128-554: The expanding university. By the 1950s, MIT no longer simply benefited the industries with which it had worked for three decades, and it had developed closer working relationships with new patrons, philanthropic foundations and the federal government. In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research. In this period MIT's various departments were researching helicopters, smart bombs and counterinsurgency techniques for

7227-508: The facility sits. Following World War II , the US Atomic Energy Commission was created to support government-sponsored peacetime research on atomic energy. The effort to build a nuclear reactor in the American northeast was fostered largely by physicists Isidor Isaac Rabi and Norman Foster Ramsey Jr. , who during the war witnessed many of their colleagues at Columbia University leave for new remote research sites following

7326-474: The first academic buildings complete, the MIT administration and the MIT charter crossed the Charles River on the ceremonial barge Bucentaur built for the occasion. Institute faculty continued to debate whether the Institute education should continue to emphasize "hands on" industrial training or scientific research. Needing funds to match Eastman's gift and cover retreating state support, President Richard MacLaurin launched an industry funding model known as

7425-535: The four-year graduation rate is 84% (the cumulative graduation rate is significantly higher). MIT is a publicly-chartered nonprofit corporation governed by a privately appointed board known as the MIT Corporation . A large board since MIT's founding, the Corporation has 60–80 members at any time, some with fixed terms, some with life appointments, and eight who serve ex officio . The Corporation approves

7524-630: The great majority of its courses available online for no charge, though without any formal accreditation for coursework completed. While the cost of supporting and hosting the project is high, OCW expanded in 2005 to include other universities as a part of the OpenCourseWare Consortium, which currently includes more than 250 academic institutions with content available in at least six languages. In 2011, MIT announced it would offer formal certification (but not credits or degrees) to online participants completing coursework in its "MITx" program, for

7623-915: The laboratory's operations. Brookhaven officials repeatedly treated the need for installing monitoring wells that would have detected the tritium leak as a low priority despite public concern and the laboratory's agreement to follow local environmental regulations. DOE's on-site oversight office, the Brookhaven Group, was directly responsible for Brookhaven's performance, but it failed to hold the laboratory accountable for meeting all of its regulatory commitments, especially its agreement to install monitoring wells. Senior DOE leadership also shared responsibility because they failed to put in place an effective system that encourages all parts of DOE to work together to ensure that contractors meet their responsibilities on environmental, safety and health issues. Unclear responsibilities for environment, safety and health matters has been

7722-404: The magnet assembly be used in another accelerator. In 1984 the first proposal for the accelerator now known as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was put forward. The construction got funded in 1991 and RHIC has been operational since 2000. One of the world's only two operating heavy-ion colliders, RHIC is as of 2010 the second-highest-energy collider after the Large Hadron Collider . RHIC

7821-515: The massive scientific endeavors of World War II , in which several new technologies, especially the atomic bomb , proved decisive for the Allied victory. Though the United States government had begun seriously investing in scientific research for national security in World War I , it was only in this wartime period that significant resources were committed to scientific problems, under the auspices first of

7920-532: The men participated in fraternities and 20% of the women were involved in sororities. Most FSILGs are located across the river in Back Bay near where MIT was founded, and there is also a cluster of fraternities on MIT's West Campus that face the Charles River Basin. After the 1997 alcohol-related death of Scott Krueger, a new pledge at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, MIT required all freshmen to live in

8019-446: The most popular department, collectively identify themselves as "Course 6". MIT students use a combination of the department's course number and the number assigned to the class to identify their subjects; for instance, the introductory calculus-based classical mechanics course is simply "8.01" (pronounced eight-oh-one ) at MIT. The four-year, full-time undergraduate program maintains a balance between professional majors and those in

8118-439: The most powerful university-based nuclear reactors in the United States. The prominence of the reactor's containment building in a densely populated area has been controversial, but MIT maintains that it is well-secured. MIT Nano, also known as Building 12, is an interdisciplinary facility for nanoscale research. Its 100,000 sq ft (9,300 m ) cleanroom and research space, visible through expansive glass facades,

8217-694: The names of important scientists and philosophers. The spacious Building 7 atrium at 77 Massachusetts Avenue is regarded as the entrance to the Infinite Corridor and the rest of the campus. Alvar Aalto 's Baker House (1947), Eero Saarinen 's MIT Chapel and Kresge Auditorium (1955), and I.M. Pei 's Green , Dreyfus, Landau, and Wiesner buildings represent high forms of post-war modernist architecture . More recent buildings like Frank Gehry 's Stata Center (2004), Steven Holl 's Simmons Hall (2002), Charles Correa 's Building 46 (2005), and Fumihiko Maki 's Media Lab Extension (2009) stand out among

8316-994: The national laboratories form an integrated system, each of them has its individual mission, capabilities, and structure. The chart shows the nature of the research done at each laboratory. All 17 of the laboratories are listed below, along with the location, establishment date, and the organization that currently operates each. UT–Battelle (since April 2000) Brookhaven Science Associates (since 1998) Triad National Security, LLC (Since 2018) Honeywell International (since 2017) Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (since 2007) Battelle Savannah River Alliance (Since 2021) Battelle Memorial Institute (since 2005) The DOE Office of Science operates an extensive network of 28 national scientific user facilities. A total of over 30,000 scientific users from universities, national laboratories, and technology companies use these facilities to advance their research and development. The staff of experts at each facility who build and operate

8415-634: The national labs serve as an exemplar for Big Science . The national laboratory system, administered first by the Atomic Energy Commission, then the Energy Research and Development Administration , and currently the Department of Energy , is one of the largest (if not the largest) scientific research systems in the world. The DOE provides about a third of the total national funding for physics , chemistry , materials science , and other areas of

8514-399: The order in which the buildings were built and their location relative (north, west, and east) to the original center cluster of Maclaurin buildings. Many of the buildings are connected above ground as well as through an extensive network of tunnels, providing protection from the Cambridge weather as well as a venue for roof and tunnel hacking . MIT's on-campus nuclear reactor is one of

8613-556: The pace of life at the Institute" to match the return to peacetime, remembering the "academic tranquility of the prewar years", though acknowledging the significant contributions of military research to the increased emphasis on graduate education and rapid growth of personnel and facilities. The faculty doubled and the graduate student body quintupled during the presidential terms of Karl Taylor Compton (1930–1948), James Rhyne Killian (1948–1957), and chancellor Julius Adams Stratton (1952–1957), whose institution-building strategies shaped

8712-886: The preferences of the students themselves, diverse social atmospheres can be sustained in different living groups; for example, according to the Yale Daily News staff's The Insider's Guide to the Colleges, 2010 , "The split between East Campus and West Campus is a significant characteristic of MIT. East Campus has gained a reputation as a thriving counterculture." MIT also has 5 dormitories for single graduate students and 2 apartment buildings on campus for married student families. MIT has an active Greek and co-op housing system, including thirty-six fraternities , sororities , and independent living groups ( FSILGs ). As of 2015 , 98% of all undergraduates lived in MIT-affiliated housing; 54% of

8811-637: The protests. The student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during what was a tumultuous time for many other universities. Johnson was seen to be highly successful in leading his institution to "greater strength and unity" after these times of turmoil. However six MIT students were sentenced to prison terms at this time and some former student leaders, such as Michael Albert and George Katsiaficas , are still indignant about MIT's role in military research and its suppression of these protests. ( Richard Leacock 's film, November Actions , records some of these tumultuous events. ) In

8910-593: The site selection, it was announced that the BNL EIC had acquired CD-0 (mission need) from the Department of Energy. BNL's eRHIC design proposes upgrading the existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which collides beams light to heavy ions including polarized protons, with a polarized electron facility, to be housed in the same tunnel. In 1958, Brookhaven scientists created one of the world's first video games , Tennis for Two . In 1968 Brookhaven scientists patented Maglev ,

9009-674: The size of the student body increased to more than one thousand. The curriculum drifted to a vocational emphasis, with less focus on theoretical science. The fledgling school still suffered from chronic financial shortages which diverted the attention of the MIT leadership. During these "Boston Tech" years, MIT faculty and alumni rebuffed Harvard University president (and former MIT faculty) Charles W. Eliot 's repeated attempts to merge MIT with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School . There would be at least six attempts to absorb MIT into Harvard. In its cramped Back Bay location, MIT could not afford to expand its overcrowded facilities, driving

9108-516: The spring semester commencing in early February and ceasing in late May. MIT students refer to both their majors and classes using numbers or acronyms alone. Departments and their corresponding majors are numbered in the approximate order of their foundation; for example, Civil and Environmental Engineering is Course 1 , while Linguistics and Philosophy is Course 24 . Students majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS),

9207-427: The successive terms of the more humanistically oriented presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980. MIT's involvement in military science surged during World War II . In 1941, Vannevar Bush was appointed head of the federal Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. Engineers and scientists from across

9306-659: The tritium had been leaking for as long as 12 years without DOE's or BNL's knowledge. Installing wells that could have detected the leak was first discussed by BNL engineers in 1993, but the wells were not completed until 1996. The resulting controversy about both BNL's handling of the tritium leak and perceived lapses in DOE's oversight led to the termination of AUI as the BNL contractor in May 1997. The responsibility for failing to discover Brookhaven's tritium leak has been acknowledged by laboratory managers, and DOE admits it failed to properly oversee

9405-572: The war in Vietnam as well as guidance systems for nuclear missiles. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research toward environmental and social problems. MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to

9504-687: The wartime laboratories, extending their lives indefinitely (they were originally thought of as temporary creations). Funding and infrastructure were secured to sponsor other "national laboratories" for both classified and basic research, especially in physics , with each national laboratory centered around one or many expensive machines (such as particle accelerators or nuclear reactors ). Most national laboratories maintained staffs of local researchers as well as allowing for visiting researchers to use their equipment, though priority to local or visiting researchers often varied from lab to lab. With their centralization of resources (both monetary and intellectual),

9603-405: Was administered by a public university (the University of California ). Additional success was had at the University of Chicago in reactor research, leading to the creation of Argonne National Laboratory outside Chicago, and at other academic institutions spread across the country. After the war and its scientific successes, the newly created Atomic Energy Commission took over the future of

9702-503: Was designed and constructed by a team of scientists from California Institute of Technology , MIT, and industrial contractors, and funded by the National Science Foundation . It was designed to open the field of gravitational-wave astronomy through the detection of gravitational waves predicted by general relativity . Gravitational waves were detected for the first time by the LIGO detector in 2015. For contributions to

9801-523: Was used in research that resulted in 3 Nobel prizes , including the discovery of the muon neutrino , the charm quark , and CP violation . In 1970 in BNL started the ISABELLE project to develop and build two proton intersecting storage rings. The groundbreaking for the project was in October 1978. In 1981, with the tunnel for the accelerator already excavated, problems with the superconducting magnets needed for

#100899