In an article for Fast Company, Charles Fishman explores how MIT researchers pioneered the use of integrated circuits, technology that is an integral component of today’s digital technologies, in the Apollo 11 computer. “MIT, NASA, and the race to the Moon laid the very foundation of the digital revolution, of the world we all live in,” writes Fishman.
Writing for Fast Company, Charles Fishman explores how MIT researchers developed the computer that helped enable the Apollo 11 moon landing. Fishman notes that the computer was “the smallest, fastest, most nimble, and most reliable computer ever created,” adding that it became “so indispensable that some at MIT and NASA called it ‘the fourth crew member.’”
On Science Friday, Prof. David Kaiser speaks with Ira Flatow and Annie Minoff about Albert Michelson, a physicist who was known for his work trying to detect evidence of the luminiferous ether, the hypothetical matter that for years scientists believed light traveled through.
Writing for Quanta Magazine, Joshua Sokol spotlights the untold story and seminal role of two MIT computer programmers, Ellen Fetter and Margaret Hamilton, in developing the “specific programs that revealed the signatures of chaos.”
CSAIL unsealed a time capsule containing artifacts from computing history at MIT after a self-taught programmer cracked the capsule’s cryptopuzzle, reports Kathryn Sotnik for NECN. MIT alumnus, Bob Frankston, who programmed the first electronic spreadsheet, noted “it’s really a reminder in a sense how long ago it was, and how much people today take these things for granted.”
Eric Kane reports for 7 News on how a time capsule at the Stata Center was unsealed at MIT this week after a Belgium programmer solved the cryptopuzzle sealing the container. The time capsule contained “MIT computing artifacts and material relating to the invention of the Internet, the ethernet, and the digital spreadsheet.”
Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Edward Glaeser spotlights a new book from Profs. Johnathan Gruber and Simon Johnson titled, “Jump-Starting America.” Glaeser writes that Gruber and Johnson have “produced a superbly argued case for public and private investment in education and research.”
Writing for Bloomberg, Profs. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson argue that federal investment in scientific research can help address income inequality. “America desperately needs more hubs of growth,” they write. “It’s a problem that the government can and should address, by identifying and investing in the technologies of the future – and ensuring that the American people as a whole share in the gains.”
In an article for The Boston Globe, Profs. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson underscore how federal investment in scientific research could be used to help ease income inequality in America. “Scaled-up and deployed strategically across most states, we estimate that an investment of $100 billion per year in public research and development could help create 4 million good new jobs,” they write.
Profs. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson speak with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle about their book, which argues that government investment in scientific research can help tackle income inequality. Gruber explains that inequality in America is place-based, noting that “we need a solution that is going to help the rest of the country, not just super-star cities, and we think place-based federal R&D can do that.”
In an article for CNN about the genesis of the term bomb cyclone, Brandon Miller notes how MIT researchers Fred Sanders and John Gyakum used the term to describe storms that strengthen rapidly. Miller explains that they “adjusted the ground rules to vary based on latitude. And they added the term ‘bomb’ because of the explosive power that these storms derive from rapid pressure drops.”
Writing for The Guardian, Prof. Kate Brown argues that a better understanding of the health ramifications of radioactivity is needed before nuclear power is expanded. “Before we enter a new nuclear age, the declassified Chernobyl health records raise questions that have been left unanswered about the impact of chronic low doses of radioactivity on human health,” writes Brown.
In an article for AIGA Eye on Design, Liz Stinson explores the history of how Muriel Cooper and her research group helped transform the field of computer-generated art. “Through the research conducted in her workshop, she inspired a generation of designers to explore the intersection of design and technology, and in the process built a lineage of creative programmers,” writes Stinson.
Prof. Kate Brown speaks with Kenneth Cukier on the Economist Radio podcast Babbage about her new book “Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future.” “In many ways we all live in the shadow of the mushroom cloud, or Chernobyl,” says Brown, “and that’s what I’d like us to be more conscious of as we talk about these issues now.”
Writing for The Boston Globe Magazine, Andrew Nemethy chronicles the work of Prof. Maria Telkes, who was known as the “Sun Queen” and developed the first habitable building heated by the sun. Nemethy writes that “almost everything she did broke ground. As a prominent and outspoken female scientist, she defied stereotypes.”