Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1861 in response to the increasing industrialization of the United States, MIT adopted a European polytechnic university model and stressed laboratory instruction in applied science and engineering. Researchers worked on computers, radar, and inertial guidance 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.

MIT, with five schools and one college which contain a total of 32 departments, is often cited as among the world's top universities. The Institute is traditionally known for its research and education in the physical sciences and engineering, and more recently in biology, economics, linguistics, and management as well. The "Engineers" sponsor 31 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.

Walter Lewin

Walter Hendrik Gustav Lewin (born January 29, 1936) is a Dutch astrophysicist and former professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lewin earned his doctorate in nuclear physics in 1965 at the Delft University of Technology and was a member of MIT's physics faculty for 43 years beginning in 1966 until his retirement in 2009.

Lewin's contributions in astrophysics include the discovery of the first slowly rotating neutron star through all-sky balloon surveys and research in X-ray detection in investigations through satellites and observatories. Lewin has received awards for teaching and is known for his lectures on physics and online courses taught on edX and MIT OpenCourseWare. These lectures have been viewed online about 2 million times yearly.

In 2014, MIT determined that Lewin had sexually harassed an online learner; as a consequence, MIT removed the lectures from its learning platforms and ended its relationship with Lewin.

Early life and education

Lewin was born to Walter Simon Lewin and Pieternella Johanna van der Tang in 1936 in The Hague, Netherlands. He was a child when the Nazis seized control of The Netherlands during World War II. His grandfather Gustav Lewin and his grandmother Emma Lewin were gassed in Auschwitz in 1942. To protect the family, Lewin's father, who was Jewish, simply left one day without telling anyone, leaving his mother to raise the children.

Comte de Lautréamont

Comte de Lautréamont (French: [lotʁeamɔ̃]) was the pseudonym of Isidore-Lucien Ducasse (4 April 1846 – 24 November 1870), a French poet born in Uruguay. His only works, Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies, had a major influence on modern literature, particularly on the Surrealists and the Situationists. He died at the age of 24.

Biography

Youth

Ducasse was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to François Ducasse, a French consular officer, and his wife Jacquette-Célestine Davezac. Very little is known about Isidore's childhood, except that he was baptized on 16 November 1847 in the cathedral of Montevideo and that his mother died soon afterwards, probably due to an epidemic. In 1851, as a five-year-old, he experienced the end of the eight-year Siege of Montevideo in the Argentine-Uruguayan War. He was brought up to speak three languages: French, Spanish and English.

In October 1859, at the age of thirteen, he was sent to high school in France by his father. He was trained in French education and technology at the Imperial Lycée in Tarbes. In 1863 he enrolled in the Lycée Louis Barthou in Pau, where he attended classes in rhetoric and philosophy (under and uppergreat). He excelled at arithmetic and drawing and showed extravagance in his thinking and style. Isidore was a reader of Edgar Allan Poe and particularly favored Percy Bysshe Shelley and Byron, as well as Adam Mickiewicz, Milton, Robert Southey, Alfred de Musset and Baudelaire. During school he was fascinated by Racine and Corneille, and by the scene of the blinding in Sophocles' Oedipus the King. According to his schoolmate Paul Lespès, he displayed obvious folly "by self-indulgent use of adjectives and an accumulation of terrible death images" in an essay. After graduation he lived in Tarbes, where he started a friendship with Georges Dazet, the son of his guardian, and decided to become a writer.

Institute of technology

Institute of technology (also: university of technology, polytechnic university, technikon, and technical college) is a designation employed for a wide range of learning institutions awarding different types of degrees and operating often at variable levels of the educational system. It may be an institution of higher education and advanced engineering and scientific research or professional vocational education, specializing in science, engineering, and technology or different sorts of technical subjects. It may also refer to a secondary education school focused in vocational training. The term institute of technology is often abbreviated IT and is not to be confused with information technology.

The English term polytechnic appeared in the early 19th century, from the French École Polytechnique, an engineering school founded in 1794 in Paris. The French term comes from the Greek πολύ (polú or polý) meaning "many" and τεχνικός (tekhnikós) meaning "arts".

While the terms "institute of technology" and "polytechnic" are synonymous, the preference concerning which one is the preferred term varies from country to country.