List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology people
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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
|
[edit] Prominent faculty members
[edit] Institute Professors
A few distinguished members of the faculty have held the title of Institute Professor, a title given to a small number of members of the faculty with extraordinary records of achievement. Usually no more than twelve professors hold this title at any one time. These include:
- Manson Benedict, nuclear engineering[1]
- Emilio Bizzi, brain and cognitive sciences[2]
- Noam Chomsky, most cited person in the world still living;[citation needed] 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, former CIA director
- Peter Diamond, economics[3]
- Mildred Dresselhaus, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and physics
- Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton, former EECS professor, co-founder and is the "E" of the defense contractor giant EG&G, photography pioneer.
- Jerome Friedman, physics
- Morris Halle, linguistics and philosophy
- John Harbison, music
- Arthur von Hippel, EECS[4]
- Chia-Chiao Lin, mathematics[5]
- John Little, management
- Francis Low, physics[6]
- Thomas Magnanti, EECS and management[7] (listed as "Dean/Faculty")
- Philip Morrison, physics
- Joel Moses, EECS
- Paul Samuelson, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Ascher Shapiro, mechanical engineering (d. Nov. 26, 2004)[8]
- Phillip Sharp, biology[9], co-founder of Biogen, 1993 Nobel Laureate in Medicine
- Isadore Singer, mathematics
- Robert Solow, Nobel prize-winner, economics
- Daniel Wang, chemical engineering[10]
- John Waugh, chemistry[11] (listed as "Professor Emeritus")
- Sheila E. Widnall, aerospace, Secretary of the Air Force
- Jerome Wiesner, EECS, MIT President, US Presidental Science Advisor [12]
[edit] Other prominent faculty and researchers
Other prominent current and former faculty and researchers include:
[edit] Computer Science & Electrical Engineering
- 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
- 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
- James D. Bruce — Vice President for Information Systems, Professor of Electrical Engineering
- Vannevar Bush — scientist & engineer, bureaucrat
- Marvin Minsky — artificial intelligence
- Alex (Sandy) Pentland — human-computer interaction and social networks
- Ron Rivest — cryptographer, co-inventor of RSA, inventor of RC5, MD5 and several other cryptographic algorithms
- Claude E. Shannon M.S., Ph.D. - inventor of information theory
- Richard Stallman — hacker, political campaigner, founder of the GNU Project and the FSF, author of GNU Emacs, MacArthur fellow
- Gerald Sussman — co-inventor of Scheme, research in artificial intelligence, computer languages, and orbital mechanics
- Ivan Sutherland — computer graphics pioneer
- Joseph Weizenbaum — computer scientist
[edit] Physics & Mathematics
- George Boolos — philosopher and mathematical logician
- Kerry Emanuel — hurricanes
- Henry W. Kendall — Nobel prize-winner, physicist
- Wolfgang Ketterle — Nobel prize-winner, physicist
- Walter Lewin — physicist
- Alan Lightman — writer, physicist
- Edward Lorenz, developed the Butterfly Effect theory
- Gian-Carlo Rota — mathematician & philosopher
- Isadore Singer — mathematician, Institute Professor, joint winner of the 2004 Abel Prize
- Dirk Jan Struik — mathematician and historian of mathematics
- Norbert Wiener — mathematician
- Frank Wilczek - physicist, Nobel prize in Physics
[edit] Biology, Chemistry, & Brain Sciences
- Eric Lander — geneticist, a principal leader of the Human Genome Project
- Robert Langer, Chemical Engineering
- Mario Molina — Nobel prize-winner, chemistry, (Earth, Atmosphere, and Planetary Sciences)
- 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
- Richard Schrock — inorganic chemist, 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
- Susumu Tonegawa — molecular biologist, 1987 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
[edit] Economics & Management
- Robert Engle — Nobel prize-winner, economics, former MIT Prof of Economics
- Jay W. Forrester — System Dynamics
- John R. Hauser, management
- Jim Hines — System Dynamics
- Eric von Hippel — economist and behavioral theorist
- Franco Modigliani — Nobel prize-winner, economist
- John Nash — Nobel prize-winner, mathematician
- Nelson Repenning — System Dynamics
- Myron S. Scholes — Nobel prize-winner, economist
- Peter Senge — Learning Organizations
- John Sterman — System Dynamics
[edit] Media Lab & Interdisciplinary
- Rodney Brooks — behavioural roboticist
- Andrew B. Lippman — Media Lab pioneer
- John Maeda — artist, graphic designer, computer scientist
- Allan McCollum — contemporary artist
- William J. Mitchell — architect, writer, media guru
- Nicholas Negroponte — OLPC project leader
- Seymour Papert — education & computers
[edit] Government & Policy
- J. C. R. Licklider — leader of the IPTO
- Theodore Postol - nuclear weapons expert and prominent critic of current ballistic missile defense systems
- Frederick P. Salvucci — civil engineer, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, and principal planner of the Big Dig
- 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.
[edit] Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences
- B.D. Colen — journalist, photographer
- John W. Dower — Historian of Japan, winner of a Pulitzer Prize
- Edgar Schein — organizational psychologist
- Robert Stalnaker - philosopher, linguist
- Sherry Turkle — clinical psychologist and sociologist
[edit] Notable alumni
See also: MIT Sloan School of Management Alumni. Names present there should also be included on this list.
[edit] Politics & Public Service
- Tadatoshi Akiba — Mayor of Hiroshima, Ph.D. (math) 1970
- 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
- Virgilio Barco - former Colombian president
- Ben Bernanke - current Chair of the Federal Reserve Bank, Ph.D. (Economics) 1979
- Samuel Bodman - current Secretary of Energy (2005-present)
- Ahmed Chalabi — controversial Iraqi politician, now currently deputy prime minister of Iraq
- Jun Choi — Mayor of Edison, New Jersey
- Jimmy Doolittle — Aeronautical engineer and U.S. Air Force general
- Luis A. Ferré — former governor of Puerto Rico
- José Figueres Ferrer — president of Costa Rica
- C.D. Howe - Canadian politician and cabinet minister
- N. Gregory Mankiw — Chairman of President Bush's Council of Economic Advisors Ph.D (Economics)
- Rigoberto Omar Romero Martínez - former Honduras Sub-secretary of Planning (1984) and Sub-secretary of Transportation and Public Works (1985).
- Mark McClellan - head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Katharine Dexter McCormick — biologist, suffragette, funded research for The Pill
- David Miliband — British politician, cabinet minister for Communities and Local Government
- Mohammad Ali Najafi — former Vice President of Iran[13]
- Benjamin Netanyahu — former Prime Minister of Israel
- David Nolan — Founder of United States Libertarian Party
- John Olver - member of the US House of Representatives for Massachusetts
- Joseph J. Romm — energy expert, author and consultant; former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U. S. Department of Energy.
- Francis Sargent - former Governor of Massachusetts
- George Schultz - Secretary of State during the Reagan administration, Ph.D. in Economics, 1949
- 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
- Milen Veltchev — Bulgarian financial minister (2001-2005)
- Robert Winters - Canadian politician
[edit] Business & Entrepreneurship
[edit] Computers & Internet
- Joseph Alsop - Cofounder of Progress Software
- Richard Barry - Cofounder of Sycamore Networks
- Carly Fiorina — Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
- Cecil H. Green - Cofounder of Texas Instruments
- William R. Hewlett — co-founder of Hewlett-Packard
- Danny Hillis — co-founder of Thinking Machines and former Disney fellow
- Mark Horowitz - founder of Rambus
- Irwin M. Jacobs - co-founder of Qualcomm with Andrew Viterbi, current chairman and former CEO. Former MIT professor (1959-1966)
- Brewster Kahle — internet archivist, founder of Alexa
- Mitch Kapor — software entrepreneur, founder of Lotus Corporation
- Steve Kirsch — inventor of the optical mouse, co-founder of Frame Technology Corporation and founder of Infoseek Corporation
- Pavel Krapivin - Cofounder of Doostang.com
- Daniel Lewin — founder of Akamai
- Jack Little — co-founder of The MathWorks, which created and sells MATLAB
- Patrick McGovern — founder of IDG/Computerworld
- Robert Metcalfe — entrepreneur, founder of 3Com; inventor of Ethernet
- Robert Noyce — integrated circuit pioneer, co-founder of Intel
- Ken Olsen — founder of Digital Equipment Corporation
- William Poduska - Computer engineer and entrepreneur, founder of Prime Computer and Apollo Computers
- William Porter — Founder of E*TRADE
- Allen Razdow — founder of Mathsoft Inc. & inventor of Mathcad
- Larry Roberts - Member of design group for 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
- Ray Stata — founder of Analog Devices
- Eric Swanson - Cofounder of Sycamore Networks
- Andrew Viterbi — inventor of the Viterbi algorithm and cofounder of Qualcomm
- Philippe Villers - founder of Computervision, which is now part of Parametric Technology Corporation
[edit] Manufacturing & Defense
- Morris Chang - Chairman of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) , the largest semiconductor foundry in the world
- Nick DeWolf - co-founder of Teradyne
- Donald Douglas — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- John Dorrance - founder of the Campbell Soup Company
- William Clay Ford, Jr. — Chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Company
- Kenneth Germeshausen - co-founder and the 1st 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G
- Herbert Grier- co-founder and the 2nd 'G' of the defense contractor EG&G
- George Hatsopoulos - founder of Thermo Electron Corporation
- Charles Koch - Co-owner, Chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, the largest private company in the US
- David H. Koch - Co-Owner of Koch Industries. Vice-Presidential Candidate for the Libertarian Party
- Jay Last - One of the "Traitorous Eight" that founded Fairchild Semiconductor. Co-founder of Amelco, which became Teledyne
- James McDonnell — co-founder of McDonnell Douglas
- Alan Mulally – President and CEO of Ford Motor Company
- William Emery Nickerson - founder of Gillette, now part of Procter & Gamble
- Willard Rockwell — founder of Rockwell International
- Henry Singleton - founder of Teledyne
- Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. — automobile entrepreneur, CEO of General Motors
- Martin Weinstein - founder of Tyco International
- Uncas Whitaker - founder of AMP Incorporated, now a division of Tyco International
[edit] Finance & Consulting
- Michael Beregovsky - Banker, philanthropist
- Richard Carrion — Chief Executive Officer of Banco Popular de Puerto Rico, and of Popular, Inc.
- Shantanurao Laxmanrao Kirloskar — founder of Kirloskar Group
- Mark Gorenberg - partner of the venture capital firm Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
- Arthur D. Little — entrepreneur, founder of the eponymous management consulting firm in 1886
- Tom Perkins — founder of VC firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
- John S. Reed — Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange
- Arthur Samberg - Chairman of Pequot Capital Management
- Ed Seykota - Commodity trader
- Jim Simons - mathematician and philanthropist. Founder of Renaissance Technologies hedge fund
- John Thain - Chief Executive Officer of the New York Stock Exchange
[edit] Health care & Biotechnology
- Neil Pappalardo - founder of Medical Information Technology Inc. (Meditech)
- Robert A. Swanson — cofounder of Genentech
- Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, beginning in January, 2006
[edit] Miscellaneous
- Aditya Birla - Industrialist, deceased
- Joseph Chung - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Jeet Singh
- 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
- David McGrath - founder of TAD Resources, now part of Adecco
- Dana Mead - former CEO and Chair of Tenneco
- Stewart Nelson - founder of System Concepts
- Generoso Pope - business magnate, founder/owner of The National Inquirer
- Michael J. Saylor - Founder of MicroStrategy
- Jeet Singh - cofounded Art Technology Group with fellow MIT grad Joseph Chung
- Dr. F. Helmut Weymar - Founder of Commodities Corporation
[edit] Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
- Steve Altes — humorist, National Medal of Technology recipient
- Harry Binswanger — philosopher, associate of Ayn Rand
- Idit Harel Capelton - educational psychologist and epistomologist
- Paige Hopewell - actress, How-to-Do Girls: Bikini Calculus
- Herbert Kalmus 1903 - inventor of Technicolor and star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
- Charlie Korsmo 2000 - actor (including Can't Hardly Wait and Dick Tracy (movie))
- Hugh Lofting — author of "Dr. Doolittle" (trained at MIT as civil engineer, 1904-05)
- Paul Krugman — New York Times columnist, John Bates Clark Medal-winner, PhD (economics)
- Charles Murray — researcher and co-author of The Bell Curve
- Tom Scott 1966 - winner of Academy Awards for sound mixing for The Right Stuff and Amadeus
- Tom Scholz — founder of the rock group Boston and Scholz Research & Development, Inc., manufacturers of Rockman sound equipment
- John Underkoffler 1988 - science & technology advisor to Steven Spielberg
- Erland Van Lidth De Jeude — Hollywood actor and opera singer
- James Woods 1969 (dropped out) — actor
- Stefano Young — Bass player for House of Kabob
[edit] Education
- Larry Bacow 1972 - President of Tufts University
- William Brody 1965 - President of Johns Hopkins University
- Jared Cohon — president of Carnegie Mellon
- Norman Fainstein 1966 - President of Connecticut College
- William J. Hecht Sr. — Former Vice President of the MIT Alumni Association
- Shirley Jackson (physicist) - physicist, President of RPI
- Martin C. Jischke — President of Purdue University
- Piermaria Oddone - director of Fermilab
- Lawrence H. Summers — economist, former President of Harvard University
- 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
- Hal Varian - economist, founding dean of the School of Information at UC Berkeley
[edit] Science & Technology
- Buzz Aldrin - Second man to walk on the Moon
- Gordon Bell - computer engineer and manager, designer of the DEC PDP and manager of the VAX project.
- 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
- 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)
- Fernando Corbato - Professor at MIT, Turing Award winner of 1990, co-founder of the Multics project
- Peter Denning -Computer scientists, co-founder of the Multics project
- Jack Dennis - Professor at MIT until 1987, co-founder of the Multics project.
- Whitfield Diffie — pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
- 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
- Charles H. Ferguson - Technology policy expert and entrepreneur
- Carl Feynman — computer scientist, son of the physicist Richard Feynman
- 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
- George Ellery Hale - astronomer
- David A. Huffman — computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
- Jerome C. Hunsaker - pioneering aeronautical engineer
- William Jeffrey - 13th Director, National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Leonard Kleinrock - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET
- 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
- Hiram Percy Maxim — Inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
- Douglas McIlroy - mathematician and engineer, an original developer of UNIX, member of the National Academy of Engineering
- Douglas J. Mink - astronomer
- 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'
- Jerome Saltzer - MIT EECS professor (1966-1995) and computing pioneer, co-founder of the Multics project, Director of Project Athena
- George W. Santos — Pioneer in bone marrow transplantation
- Bob Scheifler - computer scientist, leader of the X Window System project, architect of Jini
- Oliver R. Smoot - Namesake for Unit of measurement, President of ISO
- Ivan Sutherland - computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of original designers of the original ARPANET, Turing Award winner of 1988.
- Andrew Tanenbaum — computer scientist and creator of Minix, the precursor to Linux
- Leonard H. Tower Jr. - Free Software activist and software hacker
- Edward Yourdon- computer pioneer, popularized the term Y2K Bug
[edit] Sports
- Thomas Pelham Curtis 1894 - won Gold Medal in 110m hurdles at the inaugural Olympic Games
- Larry Kahn — tiddlywinks champion
- Henry Steinbrenner 1927 - hurdler in the 1928 Olympics, father of George Steinbrenner
- Steve Tucker 1991, two-time member of the US Olympic rowing team
- Linda Muri 1985, three-time world champion rower
- Jeff Sagarin 1970 — sports statistician
- Jason Szuminski 2000 - major league pitcher
[edit] Architecture & Design
- Gordon Bunshaft 1933 - architect of Lever House, New York City
- Ogden Codman, Jr. — architect and interior designer
- Daniel Chester French 1871 - architect of the Lincoln Memorial
- Cass Gilbert 1880 - architect of the US Supreme Court Building
- Marion Mahoney Griffin 1894 - co-designer of the plan for Canberra, Australia
- Nathanael Herreshoff — naval architect-engineer, yacht designer
- Raymond Hood 1903 - architect of Rockefeller Center
- Lois Lilly Howe 1890 - second woman in the US to found an architecture firm
- Edward Lovett — Architect
- Steve Meretzky - computer game designer
- I. M. Pei — architect, Rock-n-roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, OH and Bank of China, Hong Kong
- Steve Russell — creator of the first videogame Spacewar!
- Louis Sullivan — architect
- Harry Mohr Weese - architect & historic preservation advocate
- Robert Taylor 1892 - architect of the Tuskegee Institute and MIT's first black graduate
- Rob Fisher 1961 - artist, including "American Dream" at the Philadelphia International Airport Arrivals Hall
[edit] Alumni Nobel laureates
- George Akerlof, Ph.D. 1966 - Economics, 2001
- Robert Aumann, S.M. 1952, Ph.D. 1955 - Economics, 2005
- Sid Altman, S.B. 1960 - Chemistry, 1989
- Kofi Annan, S.M. 1972 - Peace, 2001
- Elias James Corey Jr., S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 - Chemistry, 1990
- Eric Cornell, Ph.D. 1990 - Physics, 2001
- Richard Feynman, S.B. 1939 - Physics, 1965
- Andrew Z. Fire, Ph.D. 1983, - Physiology/Medicine, 2006
- Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics 1969
- Leland H. Hartwell, Ph.D. 1964 - Medicine/Physiology, 2001
- H. Robert Horvitz, S.B. 1968 - Physiology/Medicine, 2002
- Henry W. Kendall, S.B. 1948, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics, 1990
- Lawrence Klein, Ph.D. 1944 - Economics, 1980
- Robert B. Laughlin, Ph.D. 1979 - Physics, 1998
- Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D. 1951 - Physics, 1969
- Robert C. Merton, Ph.D. 1970 - Economics, 1997
- Robert S. Mulliken, S.B. 1917 - Chemistry, 1966
- Robert Mundell, Ph.D. 1956 - Economics, 1999
- Charles Pedersen, S.M. 1927 - Chemistry, 1987
- William D. Phillips, Ph.D. 1976 - Physics 1997
- Burton Richter, S.B. 1952, Ph.D. 1956 - Physics, 1976
- John Robert Schrieffer, S.B. 1953 - Physics, 1972
- William Shockley, Ph.D. 1936 - Physics, 1956
- George F. Smoot, S.B. 1966, Ph.D. 1970, - Physics, 2006
- Joseph Stiglitz, Ph.D. 1966 - Economics, 2001
- Carl E. Wieman, S.B. 1973 - Physics, 2001
- Robert Burns Woodward, S.B. 1936 - Chemistry, 1965
[edit] 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
[edit] Miscellaneous
- Csaba Csere — automotive journalist, editor of Car and Driver
- Ray Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
- Tom Magliozzi — radio personality (Car Talk)
- Princess Ubol Ratana - of Thailand
- Ellen Spertus - Named "Sexiest Geek Alive"
[edit] Fictional characters
- Jack Florey
- Stanley Brack
- Gordon Freeman, Half-Life - Degree in physics.
- 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 [14].
- Will Hunting, Good Will Hunting - Savant on-campus janitor.
- James Clayton, The Recruit - CIA 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 (in Carl Sagan's novel, Ellie Arroway is a Harvard graduate).
- Benjamin Gates, National Treasure.
- Otacon, Metal Gear Solid
- Mike Cannon, Las Vegas.
- Darcy, Secretary in The Loop.
- Tony Stark, Marvel Comics' Iron Man.
- Ed Straker, commander of SHADO.
- Richard Sumner, Desk Set - A "PhD from MIT in Science".
