List of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Alumni - Science and Technology

Science and Technology

• Colin Adams – mathematician, knot theory expert, teacher, writer, math humorist
• Buzz Aldrin – combat pilot, astronaut, second man to walk on the Moon
• Pauline Morrow Austin – meteorologist, Director of Weather Radar at MIT, research staff in Radiation Laboratory
• Adrian Bejan – professor of mechanical engineering, proponent of the constructal theory of design and evolution in nature
• Gordon Bell – computer engineer and manager, designer of DEC PDP, manager of the VAX project
• Stephen Benton – invented rainbow hologram, pioneered digital holography
• Marc Blank – computer game designer and programmer, developed Zork adventure game
• Barry Blesser – audio engineer, pioneer of digital audio, former president of the AES
• Manuel Blum, computer scientist, received Turing Award (1995) for studies in computational complexity theory
• Dan Bricklin – co-inventor of Visicalc, the first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program
• Edward M. Burgess – chemist, inventor of the Burgess reagent
• 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 – retired MIT professor, Turing Award (1990), co-founder of the Multics project
• Peter J. Denning (SM 1965, PhD 1968)— computer scientist, professor, co-founder of the Multics project, pioneered virtual memory
• Jack Dennis – retired MIT professor, co-founder of the Multics project.
• Whitfield Diffie – pioneer of public-key cryptography and the Diffie-Hellman protocol.
• K. Eric Drexler – pioneer nanotechnologist, author, co-founded Foresight Institute
• Harold Eugene "Doc" Edgerton (SM 1927, ScD 1931) – former MIT Institute Professor, co-founder (the "E" of EG&G), stroboscope photography pioneer, Oscar Award (1940)
• Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992) – only child of Thomas Alva Edison who graduated college; inventor with over 80 patents.
• Farouk El-Baz – Supervisor of Lunar Science Planning, Apollo Program, NASA
• Charles H. Ferguson (PhD 1989) – technology policy expert, software entrepreneur, film director/producer, Oscar Award (2010)
• Carl Feynman – computer scientist, son of the physicist Richard Feynman
• Bob Frankston (SB 1970. SM EE 1974) – co-inventor of Visicalc (first WYSIWYG PC spreadsheet program); critic of telecommunications public policy
• Limor Fried – Open Source Hardware pioneer, founder of Adafruit Industries
• Simson Garfinkel – journalist, author, computer security researcher, entrepreneur
• Ivan Getting – co-inventor of the Global Positioning System (GPS), Draper Prize (2003)
• Jim Gettys – an original developer of X Window, former director of GNOME.
• Bill Gosper (SB 1965) – mathematician, a founder of the original hacker community, pioneer of symbolic computing, originator of hashlife
• George Ellery Hale – astronomer, founded several astronomical observatories, developed Throop College of Technology into Caltech
• David A. Huffman – computer scientist known for Huffman coding used in lossless data compression
• Jerome C. Hunsaker (SM 1912, ScD 1923) – pioneering aeronautical engineer, airship designer, former head of MIT Mechanical Engineering Department
• William Jeffrey – defense technology expert, past director of National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Thomas Kailath – entrepreneur, retired Stanford professor, IEEE Medal of Honor (2007)
• Rudolf E. Kalman – electrical engineer, theoretical mathematician, co-inventor of Kalman Filter algorithm, Draper Prize (2008)
• Jordin Kare – high energy laser physicist, inventor of laser "mosquito zapper"
• Leonard Kleinrock – computing and Internet pioneer, one of the key group of designers of the original ARPANET
• Henry Kloss (1953, dropped out) – audio engineer; entrepreneur; founder of Acoustic Research, KLH, Advent, Kloss Video, Cambridge SoundWorks, Tivoli Audio
• Loren Kohnfelder – introduced the term public key certificate for public key cryptography in secure network communication
• Raymond Kurzweil (SB 1970) – inventor, entrepreneur in music synthesizers, OCR and speech-to-text processing
• Leslie Lamport – computing pioneer in temporal logic, developer of LaTeX
• Robert S. Langer – biochemical engineer, biomedical researcher, MIT professor, inventor, entrepreneur, Draper Prize (2002)
• Norman Levinson (SB SM 1934, ScD 1935) – theoretical mathematician, former Institute Professor at MIT, developed Levinson recursion
• Edward Norton Lorenz – mathematician, meteorologist, MIT professor emeritus, invented chaos theory, discovered Lorenz attractor
• Joseph Lykken (PhD 1982) – theoretical physicist, proposed "weak scale superstring" theory
• Hiram Percy Maxim – inventor of the "Maxim Silencer" and founder of the American Radio Relay League
• Douglas McIlroy (PhD 1959) – mathematician, software engineer, professor, developed component-based software engineering, an original developer of Unix, member of National Academy of Engineering
• Fulvio Melia (PhD 1985) – theoretical astrophysicist, professor, author, editor, general educator
• Douglas J. Mink (SB 1973, SM 1974) – astronomer, software developer, co-discovered rings around Uranus, bicycling activist
• Bill Parker – artist, engineer, inventor of the modern plasma lamp
• Bradford Parkinson – co-inventor of the Global Positioning System (GPS), Draper Prize (2003)
• Robert A. "Bob" Pease (SB 1961) – analog integrated circuit design expert, technical author
• Alan Perlis (SM 1949, PhD 1950) – computer scientist, professor, pioneer of programming languages, winner of the first Turing Award (1966)
• Radia Perlman (SB 1973, SM 1976, PhD 1988) – computer scientist, network engineer, invented numerous data network technologies, dubbed "Mother of the Internet"
• Adam Riess (SB 1992) – physicist, Nobel Prize winner in Physics awarded in 2011 for demonstrating the acceleration of the universe's rate of expansion
• Jerome Saltzer – retired MIT professor, timesharing computing pioneer, co-founder of the Multics project, Director of Project Athena
• Frederick P. Salvucci (SB 1961, SM 1962) – civil engineer, transportation planner, MIT professor, former Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation, public transit advocate, Big Dig advocate
• George W. Santos – pioneer in bone marrow transplantation
• Bob Scheifler – computer scientist, leader of the X Window System project, architect of Jini
• Oliver Selfridge – computer scientist, father of machine perception
• Amy B. Smith (SB 1984, SM 1995) – mechanical engineer, inventor, former Peace Corps volunteer, MIT senior lecturer and researcher in appropriate technology, MacArthur Fellow (2004)
• Oliver R. Smoot – namesake for unit of measurement, past chair of ANSI, past president of ISO
• Richard M. Stallman (grad student, dropped out) – computer programmer; Free Software activist; creator of EMACS editor, GNU; MacArthur Fellow (1990)
• Guy L. Steele, Jr. (SM 1977, PhD 1980) – computer scientist, programming language expert, was an original editor of the Jargon File (Hacker's Dictionary)
• Robert F. Stengel (SB 1960) – professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, leading expert on flight dynamics and optimal control, AIAA Mechanics and Control of Flight Award (2000)
• Ivan Sutherland (PhD 1963) – computer graphics pioneer, former professor, ARPAnet and Internet pioneer, co-founded Evans & Sutherland, Turing Award (1988)
• Andrew S. Tanenbaum (SB 1965) – computer scientist, professor, textbook author (operating systems), creator of Minix (the precursor to Linux)
• Frederick Terman – electrical engineer, past provost of Stanford University, "father of Silicon Valley"
• Ray Tomlinson – innovator of email systems, pioneered the use of the "@" symbol for email
• Leonard H. Tower Jr. – early Free Software activist, software hacker
• Robert Williams Wood – optical physicist, developed "black light", ultraviolet and infrared photography
• Edward Yourdon – computer pioneer, author, lecturer, popularized the term Y2K Bug
• Mark Ain - Founder of Kronos Incorporated