- -
called "New College" or "the college at New Towne", the institution was renamed Harvard College on March 13, 1639. It was named after John Harvard, a young English clergyman from Southwark, London, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge (after which Cambridge, Massachusetts is named), who bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and £779 pounds sterling, which was half of his estate. The charter creating the corporation of Harvard College came in 1650.
In the early years, the College trained many Puritan ministers. The college offered a classic
academic course based on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended Cambridge University—but one consistent with the prevailing Puritan philosophy. The College was never affiliated with any particular denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches throughout New England. An early brochure, published in 1643, justified the College's existence: "To advance Learning and
perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate Ministery to the Churche".
The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the College toward intellectual independence from Puritanism.
◎麻省理工學院 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic
departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.
Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, the Institute adopted the European polytechnic university model and emphasized laboratory instruction from an early date. MIT's early emphasis on applied technology at the undergraduate and graduate levels led to close cooperation with industry but curricular reforms under Karl Compton and Vannevar Bush in the 1930s re-emphasized basic scientific research. MIT was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934 and researchers were involved in efforts to develop computers, radar, and inertial guidance in connection with defense research during World War II and the Cold War. Post-war defense research contributed to the rapid expansion of the faculty and campus under James Killian.
The current 168-acre (68.0 ha) campus opened in 1916 and extends over 1 mile (1.6 km) along the northern bank of the Charles River basin. In the past 60 years, MIT's educational disciplines have expanded beyond the physical sciences and engineering into fields like biology, economics, linguistics, political science, and management.
MIT enrolled 4,232 undergraduates and 6,152 graduate students for 2009–2010. It employs around 1,000 faculty members. 76 Nobel Laureates, 50 National Medal of Science recipients, and 38 MacArthur Fellows are currently or have previously been affiliated with the university.
MIT has a strong entrepreneurial culture and the aggregated revenues of companies founded by MIT alumni would be the eleventh largest economy in the world. MIT managed $718.2 million in research expenditures and an $8.0 billion endowment in 2009.
The Engineers sponsor 33 sports, most teams of which compete in the NCAA Division III's New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference; the Division I rowing programs compete as part of the EARC and EAWRC.
◎麻省理工學院 Massachusetts Institute of
Technology-Foundation and early years (1857–1917)
- -
In 1859, the Massachusetts General Court was given a proposal for use of newly opened lands in Back Bay in Boston for a museum and Conservatory of Art and Science. In 1861, The
Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved a charter for the incorporation of the "Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Society of Natural History" submitted by William Barton Rogers.
Rogers sought to establish a new form of higher education to address the challenges posed by rapid advances in science and technology during the mid-19th century with which classic
institutions were ill-prepared to deal. Barton believed, “The true and only practicable object of a polytechnic school is, as I conceive, the teaching, not of the minute details and manipulations of the arts, which can be done only in the workshop, but the inculcation of those scientific principles which form the basis and explanation of them, their leading processes and operations in
connection with physical laws.”
← A 1901 map of MIT's Boston campus.
The Rogers Plan, as it has come to be known, reflected the German research university model, emphasizing an
independent faculty engaged in research as well as instruction oriented around seminars and laboratories. Rogers proposed that this new form of education be rooted in three principles:
the educational value of useful knowledge, the necessity of “learning by doing”, and integrating a professional and liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.
Because open conflict in the Civil War broke out only weeks after receiving the charter, MIT's first classes were held in rented space at the Mercantile Building in downtown Boston in 1865. Though it was to be located in the middle of Boston, the mission of the new institute matched the intent of the 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act to fund
institutions "to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes." Although the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts founded what was to become the University of Massachusetts under this act, MIT was also named a land
grant school. The proceeds went toward new buildings in Boston's Back Bay in 1866; MIT was called "Boston Tech."
During the next half-century, the focus of the science and engineering curriculum drifted towards vocational concerns instead of theoretical programs. Over the next 40 years, the MIT faculty and alumni repeatedly rejected overtures from Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot to merge MIT
with Harvard College's Lawrence Scientific School.
◎麻省理工學院 Development and post-war growth (1916–1965)
Industrialist George Eastman donated the funds to build a new campus along a mile-long tract on the Cambridge side of the Charles River, almost entirely on landfill. In 1916, MIT moved into the handsome new neoclassical campus designed by William W. Bosworth.
In the 1930s President Karl Taylor Compton and Vice-President (effectively Provost) Vannevar Bush drastically reformed the applied technology curriculum by re-emphasizing the importance of
"pure" sciences like physics and chemistry and reducing the work required in shops and drafting.
In sharp contrast to the Ivy League, it catered to middle-class families and depended more on tuition than on endowments or grants. Despite the challenges of the Great Depression, the
reforms "renewed confidence in the ability of the Institute to develop leadership in science as well as in engineering." The expansion and reforms cemented MIT's academic reputationand it was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1934.
MIT was substantially changed by its involvement in military research during World War II. Bush was appointed head of the enormous Office of Scientific Research and Development and directed funding to only a select group of universities, including MIT. MIT's Radiation Laboratory was established in 1940 to assist the British in developing a microwave radar and the first
mass-produced units were installed on front-line units within months. Other defense projects included gyroscope-based and other complex control systems for gun and bombsights and inertial navigation under Charles Stark Draper's Instrumentation Laboratory, the development of a digital computer for flight simulations under Project Whirlwind, and high-speed and high-altitude
photography under Harold Edgerton. By the end of the war, MIT employed a staff of over 4,000 (including more than a fifth of the nation's physicists) and was the nation's single largest wartime R&D contractor.
In the post-war years, government-sponsored research such as SAGE and guidance systems for ballistic missiles and Project Apollo combined with surging student enrollments under the G.I. Bill contributed to a rapid growth in the size of the Institute's research staff and physical plant as well as placing an increased emphasis on graduate education. The profound changes that occurred at MIT between 1930 and 1957 included the doubling of its faculty and a quintupling of its graduate student population. These changes were significantly guided and shaped by the
institution-building strategies of Karl Taylor Compton, president of MIT between 1930 and 1948,
- -
James Rhyne Killian, president from 1948 to 1957, and Julius Adams Stratton, chancellor from 1952 to 1957.
While the school mainly served the needs of industrial patrons in the 1920s, by the 1950s it had gained considerable autonomy from industrial corporations while attracting new patrons and building a close relationship with philanthropic foundations and the federal government. As the Cold War and Space Race intensified and concerns about the technology gap between the U.S. and the Soviet Union grew more pervasive throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MIT's involvement in the military-industrial complex was a source of pride on campus.
◎麻省理工學院 Recent history (1966–present)
The MIT Media Lab houses researchers developing novel uses of computer technology. Shown here is the 1982 building, designed by I.M. Pei, with an extension (background) designed by Fumiko Maki and opened in March 2010.
Following a comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum in 1949 and the successive appointments of more humanistically oriented Presidents Howard W. Johnson and Jerome Wiesner between 1966 and 1980, MIT greatly expanded its programs in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Previously marginalized faculties in the areas of economics,
management, political science, and linguistics emerged into cohesive and assertive departments by attracting respected professors, launching competitive graduate programs, and forming into the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1950 to compete with the powerful Schools of Science and Engineering.
In late 1960s and early 1970s, student and faculty activists protested against the Vietnam War and MIT's defense research. The Union of Concerned Scientists was founded on March 4, 1969 during a meeting of faculty members and students seeking to shift the emphasis on military research towards
environmental and social problems. Although MIT ultimately divested itself from the Instrumentation Laboratory and moved all classified research off-campus to the Lincoln
Laboratory facility in 1973 in response to the protests, the student body, faculty, and administration remained comparatively unpolarized during the tumultuous era.
In addition to developing the predecessors to modern computing and networking technologies, students, staff, and faculty members at the Project MAC, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and Tech Model Railroad Club wrote some of the earliest interactive computer games like Spacewar!
and created much of modern hacker slang. Several major computer-related organizations have originated at MIT since the 1980s; Richard Stallman's GNU Project and the subsequent Free Software Foundation were founded in the mid-1980s at the AI Lab, the MIT Media Lab was founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and Jerome Wiesner to promote research into novel uses of computer technology, the World Wide Web Consortium standards organization was founded at the Laboratory for Computer Science in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the
OpenCourseWare project has made course materials for over 1,800 MIT classes available online free of charge since 2002, and the One Laptop per Child initiative to expand computer education and connectivity to children worldwide was launched in 2005. Upon taking office in 2004,
President Hockfield launched an Energy Research Council to investigate how MIT can respond to the interdisciplinary challenges of increasing global energy consumption.
MIT was named a sea-grant college in 1976 to support its programs in oceanography and marine sciences and was named a space-grant college in 1989 to support its aeronautics and astronautics programs. Despite diminishing government financial support over the past quarter century, MIT launched several development campaigns to significantly expand the campus: new dormitories and athletics buildings on west campus, the Tang Center for Management Education, several buildings in the northeast corner of campus supporting research into biology, brain and cognitive sciences, genomics, biotechnology, and cancer research, and a number of new "backlot" buildings on Vassar Street including the Stata Center. Construction on campus has recently concluded an expansion of the Media Lab, the Sloan's eastern campus, and graduate residences in the northwest.
Are you familiar with all of contents above?
Let’s take a quiz!!
1. Where is the MIT located?
2. How many departments the MIT have?
3. Why MIT is famous in the world?
- -
◎自由女神像 Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World, French: La Liberté éclairant le monde) is a colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frédéric
Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886. The statue, a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libert as, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an icon of freedom and of the United States.
Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician É douard René de Laboulaye, who commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Due to the troubled political situation in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the Americans provide the pedestal and the site. Bartholdi completed both the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were
exhibited for publicity at international expositions. The arm was displayed in New York's Madison Square Park from 1876 to 1882. Fundraising proved difficult, especially for the Americans, and by 1885 work on the pedestal was threatened due to lack of funds. Publisher Joseph Pulitzer of the World initiated a drive for donations to complete the project, and the campaign inspired over 120,000 contributors, most of whom gave less than a dollar. The statue was constructed in France, shipped overseas in crates, and assembled on the completed pedestal on what was then called Bedloe's Island. The statue's completion was marked by New York's first ticker-tape parade and a dedication ceremony presided over by President Grover Cleveland.
The statue was administered by the United States Lighthouse Board until 1901 and then by the Department of War; since 1933 it has been maintained by the National Park Service. The statue was closed for renovation for much of 1938. In the early 1980s, it was found to have deteriorated to such an extent that a major restoration was required. While the statue was closed from 1984 to 1986, the torch and a large part of the internal structure were replaced. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, it was closed for reasons of safety and security; the pedestal reopened in 2004 and the statue in 2009, with limits on the number of visitors allowed to ascend to the crown. The statue is scheduled to close for up to a year beginning in late 2011 so that a secondary staircase can be installed. Public access to the balcony surrounding the torch has been barred for safety reasons since 1916.
◎自由女神像 Statue of Liberty-Design and construction
Origin
The origin of the Statue of Liberty project is generally traced to a comment made by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye in mid-1865. In after-dinner conversation at his home near Versailles, Laboulaye, an ardent supporter of the Union in the American Civil War, stated, "If a monument should rise in the United States, as a memorial to their independence, I should think it only natural if it were built by united effort—a common work of both our nations."
← Bartholdi's design patent
Laboulaye's comment was not intended as a proposal, but it inspired a young sculptor, Frédéric Bartholdi, who was present at the dinner.Given the repressive nature of the regime of Napoleon III, Bartholdi took no immediate action on the idea except to discuss it with Laboulaye. Instead, Bartholdi approached Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, with a plan to build a huge lighthouse in the form of an ancient Egyptian female fellah or peasant, robed and holding a torch aloft, at the northern entrance to the Suez Canal in Port Said.
Sketches and models were made of the proposed work, though it was never erected. There was a classical precedent for the Suez proposal, the Colossus of Rhodes: a bronze
statue of the Greek god of the sun, Helios. This statue is believed to have been over 100 feet (30 m) high, and it similarly stood at a harbor entrance and carried a light to guide ships.
The American project was further delayed by the Franco-Prussian War, in which Bartholdi served as a major of militia. In the war, Napoleon III was captured and deposed. Bartholdi's home
province of Alsace was lost to the Prussians, and a more liberal republic was installed in France. As Bartholdi had been planning a trip to the United States, he and Laboulaye decided the time was right to discuss the idea with influential Americans. In June 1871, Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic, with letters of introduction signed by Laboulaye. Arriving at New York Harbor, Bartholdi fixed on Bedloe's Island as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York had to sail past it. He was delighted to learn that the island was owned by the United States
government—it had been ceded by the New York State Legislature in 1800 for harbor defense. It was thus, as he put it in a letter to Laboulaye, "land common to all the states." As well as meeting
- -
many influential New Yorkers, Bartholdi visited President Ulysses S. Grant, who assured him that it would not be difficult to obtain the site for the statue. Bartholdi crossed the United States twice by rail, and met many Americans whom he felt would be sympathetic to the project. However, he remained concerned that popular opinion on both sides of the Atlantic was insufficiently
supportive of the proposal, and he and Laboulaye decided to wait before mounting a public campaign.
← Bartholdi's Lion of Belfort
Bartholdi had made a first model of his concept in 1870. The son of a friend of Bartholdi's, American artist John La Farge, later maintained that Bartholdi made the first sketches for the statue during his U.S. visit at La Farge's Rhode Island studio.
Bartholdi continued to develop the concept following his return to France. He also worked on a number of sculptures designed to bolster French patriotism after the defeat by the Prussians. One of these was the Lion of Belfort, a monumental sculpture carved in sandstone below the fortress of Belfort, which during the war had resisted a Prussian siege for over three months. The defiant lion, 73 feet (22 m) long and half that in height, displays an emotional quality characteristic of Romanticism, which Bartholdi would later bring to the Statue of Liberty.
◎自由女神像 Statue of Liberty- Design, style, and symbolism
← Detail from a fresco by Constantino Brumidi in the U.S. Capitol in
Washington, D.C., showing two early symbols of America: Columbia (left) and the Indian princess
Bartholdi and Laboulaye considered how best to express the idea of American liberty. In early American history, two female figures were frequently used as cultural symbols of the nation. One, Columbia, was seen as an
embodiment of the United States in the manner that Britannia was identified with the United Kingdom and Marianne came to represent France. Columbia had supplanted the earlier