This year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) celebrates its 150th anniversary. In this book, the contributing authors mark the event by describing aspects of MIT’s rich and diverse history. The chapters chronologically describe the evolution of MIT from its inception to recent times. In this respect, the book is likely to be of particular interest to alumni of MIT, staff (past and present), and authors who have associations with MIT.
Several of the chapters, however, present discussions that are likely to be of interest to a much broader audience. For example, one chapter deals with MIT’s military involvement in World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War. In the section on World War II, the reader will learn of the clandestine meeting in 1940 when the British carried to the US the newly invented cavity magnetron, and provided the opportunity for research collaboration in radar technology. This led to the rapid growth of MIT’s radiation laboratory, which by the end of the war had a staff of 4,000 people and an operating budget of around $1 million per month (approximately $12 million per month by today’s standards).
As technologies become increasingly complex and ever more powerful, it is crucial that individual scientists and engineers personally adopt ethical positions concerning the potential ramifications of their research, and that such ethical considerations are not swept to one side simply because governmental or commercial organizations offer lucrative contracts. As outlined in this book, the experiences of MIT in relation to the so-called military-industrial-university complex (which for some decades was a key aspect of MIT’s raison-d’être) retain their relevance, and in this respect the book makes an important contribution.
The authors have included many black-and-white illustrations; unfortunately, some of the reproductions are a little dark. As may be expected of a book of this kind, it contains a number of anecdotal accounts that serve to emphasize a positive history of the institution.
