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Top tweets of 2016

Best posts on @MIT touch on LIGO discoveries, Nobel laureate Bengt Holmström, Apollo pioneer Margaret Hamilton, Commencement speaker Matt Damon, and more.
A tweet noting "The Simpsons"' prediction of a Nobel Prize for Professor Bengt Holmström was @MIT's most popular to date.
Caption:
A tweet noting "The Simpsons"' prediction of a Nobel Prize for Professor Bengt Holmström was @MIT's most popular to date.
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Image: The Simpsons/Fox

2016 was a remarkable year for MIT, which in the spring celebrated 100 years since its move from Boston to Cambridge, Massachusetts. The year was remarkable on Twitter as well, as MIT's followers more than doubled in number, with a current total of more than 611,000.

Followers were particularly moved by news of the first — and second — direct detection of gravitational waves with the LIGO experiment; an episode of "The Simpsons" predicting Professor Bengt Holmström's 2016 Nobel Prize in economics; tributes to Apollo pioneer and former MIT computer scientist Margaret Hamilton; and comments by actor Matt Damon, who gave the keynote at this year's Commencement ceremony. Tweets noting Square Root Day on April 4th, a supermoon setting over the MIT Dome, and the Institute's new accelerator, The Engine, also garnered high engagement.

Here are the top 16 @MIT tweets of 2016, measured in retweets and likes, in chronological order:

A monumental scientific feat

To Einstein, with love

Celebrating Square Root Day

Matt Damon's advice for the Class of 2016

Space pirate in the movies, honorary MIT pirate in real life

Twice as nice: Detecting a second black hold merger

Commemorating a return to Jupiter

Taking a stand against violence

Mini Margaret in celebration of her Apollo achievements

A discussion of "forbidden research" for social good

Lauding a pioneer of nanoscale engineering

Professor Holmström's Nobel Prize reaction

Milhouse gets one right

Announcing a new accelerator from MIT

Setting supermoon

President Obama honors an MIT legend

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