How MIT's first nine presidents helped transform the Institute from a small technical school into a major research university.
How MIT's first nine presidents helped transform the Institute from a small technical school into a major research university.
MIT was founded in 1861 as a polytechnic institute in Boston's Back Bay, overshadowed by its neighbor across the Charles River, Harvard University. Harvard offered a classical education to young men of America's ruling class; the early MIT trained men (and a few women) from all parts of society as engineers for the nation's burgeoning industries. Over the years, MIT expanded its mission and ventured into other fields-pure science, social science, the humanities-and established itself in Cambridge as Harvard's enduring rival. In A Widening Sphere, Philip Alexander traces MIT's evolution from polytechnic to major research institution through the lives of its first nine presidents, exploring how the ideas, outlook, approach, and personality of each shaped the school's intellectual and social cultures. Alexander describes, among otherthings, the political skill and entrepreneurial spirit of founder and first president, William Rogers; institutional growing pains under John Runkle; Francis Walker's campaign to broaden the curriculum, especially in the social sciences, and to recruit first-rate faculty; James Crafts, whose heart lay in research, not administration; Henry Pritchett's thwarted effort to merge with Harvard (after which he decamped to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching); Richard Maclaurin's successful strategy to move the institute to Cambridge, after considering other sites (including a golfclub in Brighton); the brilliant, progressive Ernest Nichols, who succumbed to chronic illness and barely held office; Samuel Stratton's push towards a global perspective; and Karl Compton's vision for a new kind of Institute-a university polarized around science and technology. Through these interlocking yet independent portraits, Alexander reveals the inner workings of a complex and dynamic community of innovators.
By:
Philip N. Alexander
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 1mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780262543996
ISBN 10: 0262543990
Pages: 520
Publication Date: 02 November 2021
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments ix “A future full of promise” 1 William Barton Rogers, 1804–1882 “Sailing seas not well charted” 47 John Daniel Runkle, 1822–1902 “All that we hold true and manly” 101 Francis Amasa Walker, 1840–1897 “Uneasy lies the head” 149 James Mason Crafts, 1839–1917 “Into touch with the world at large” 175 Henry Smith Pritchett, 1857–1939 “Thoroughly sure of himself” 221 Richard Cockburn Maclaurin, 1870–1920 “Not the man for us” 281 Ernest Fox Nichols, 1869–1924 “Shaping things in orderly fashion” 295 Samuel Wesley Stratton, 1861–1931 “All knowledge his sphere” 355 Karl Taylor Compton, 1887–1954 Notes 431 Sources 459 Index 475
Philip N. Alexander is a Research Associate in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT.
Reviews for A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT
[Alexander's] highly readable new book is remarkable for the human interest that colors the institutional history...The author has an uncanny knack for unearthing and encapsulating telling details. The book achieves exactly the right blend of technical explanation and anecdote. --Jeffrey Mifflin, , Historical Journal of Massachusetts