The Maclaurin buildings : a history of MIT's Main Campus and the people who built it

Abstract

In 1916, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology relocated from its Boston Tech campus to its newly built facilities in Cambridge. During the construction of the New Technology in the May of 1915, MIT president Richard Maclaurin decided to have the names of famous scientists, engineers, inventors, and philosophers engraved on ten faces of the square pavilions that capped each of the buildings. In the end, 115 names were chosen, and they remain on the MIT buildings to this day. This thesis explores how Maclaurin came to choose the men whose names now adorn the MIT rooftops. It also explains who each of these individuals was and how they came to so greatly influence their respective fields.