Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics

Physics was taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from the time classes were first offered in 1865. William B. Rogers, the founder and first president of MIT, was the first professor of physics. In 1869 Rogers established the “Physical Laboratory,” probably the first laboratory for instruction in physics in the United States. The lab was designed and equipped by Edward Pickering, the first director of the Rogers Lab. In 1872 the lab was renamed the Rogers Laboratory of Physics. Physics became Course VIII in 1873.

In 1882 the first course in electrical engineering in the United States was developed and administered within the Department of Physics. It became a separate department, Course VI, in 1902.

<p>[Victor Weisskopf] was a member of the faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Physics starting in 1945, Institute Professor from 1965, and Institute Professor Emeritus from 1974.</p>

<p>After receiving his doctorate from Columbia University, [Bernard Taub Feld] was appointed instructor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1948, associate professor in 1952, and professor in 1955. He served as head of the physics department's Division of Nuclear and High-Energy Physics from 1975 to 1980.</p>

<p>1945 to 1946 Associate Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology</p>
<p>1946 to 1965 Professor of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology</p>
<p>1967 to 1973 Head, Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology</p>
<p>His decades-long association with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began in 1945 when, recruited by Jerrold Zacharias, Weisskopf joined the faculty of the physics department, where he resumed his scientific research and assumed teaching duties as a professor of physics. In 1965 he was named Institute Professor, a position he held until his retirement in 1974. During that period, from 1967 through 1973, he served as the head of the Department of Physics and played a crucial role in the formation of the Center for Theoretical Physics. From 1974 until the end of his life Weisskopf held the titles of Institute Professor Emeritus and Professor of Physics Emeritus.</p>

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