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MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics
MIT Building #36 - Sherman Fairchild Building
EstablishedJanuary 1st, 1946
Budget$80 Million/yr
DirectorProf. Marc Baldo
Address55 Vassar St.
LocationCambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Operating agency
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Websitehttps://www.rle.mit.edu/

Introduction

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The Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT was founded in 1946 as the successor to the Radiation Laboratory (RadLab) of World War II. It has been argued that RLE is the prototype of the post-war ‘Military-Industrial-Academic Complex’ that established US supremacy in microelectronics and other strategically important technologies[1][2].

Founding and Funding by Joint Services Electronics Program

The WWII RadLab was one of the most important military research and development efforts of WWII, rivaling the Manhattan Project in significance to the allied war effort. At the conclusion of the war, the US armed services sought to preserve the Basic Research Division of the RadLab. More broadly, the US desired to ‘consolidate and extend its wartime partnership with universities’[1], especially in the strategically important research field of electronics. RLE was created for this purpose in 1946. Every initial member of the staff was engaged in governmental research during the war.

MIT described the objectives of RLE as follows:

‘The purpose of the laboratory is to assure a continuing flow of competent young men trained in electronics, and the steady advance of scientific knowledge in this field. Extraordinary advances in electronic techniques achieved during the war will exert an enormous influence on industry and science alike. As host to the Radiation Laboratory, M.I.T. has been intimately associated with these developments. In establishing the Research Laboratory of Electronics it is the intent of the Institute to make further contributions in this field. Much of the basic research program of the M.I.T. Radiation Laboratory will be continued in this newly-created center.’

To provide funding, the US armed services created the Joint Services Electronics Program (JSEP):

‘the first peacetime attempt to use a DOD-academia-industry partnership to meet our nation’s defense research needs’

-      William H. Taft IV, Deputy Secretary of Defense[2]

The initial RLE JSEP contract was for $600k, with all research to be unclassified[1]. JSEP grew to support basic electronics research in academia across the US, continuing at MIT until 1996, at which time it was ‘the oldest sponsored research program at MIT as well as the federal government's oldest university-based sponsored research program’[3].

Infrastructure and Interdisciplinary Character

MIT Building 20 - 1945

The RadLab was notable for its interdisciplinary culture, combining researchers with training in Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Mathematics, among other disciplines. Members of the RadLab were mixed together within its unprepossessing physical location in the ‘plywood palace’ of MIT’s Building 20, later described as a ‘legend of innovation, widely regarded as one of the most creative spaces in the world’[4].

At its founding, MIT sought to recreate the interdisciplinary character of the RadLab, providing an example for other post-war academic research centers. RLE was launched at the site of the RadLab in Building 20 under the joint supervision of the MIT Departments of Physics and Electrical Engineering.

Building 20 was demolished in 1998 and RLE is presently housed in MIT Buildings 36 and 38, the Sherman Fairchild Buildings, which were designed by Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill (SOM) and opened in 1973. RLE also occupies several other SOM-designed buildings, including the Vannevar Bush Building - 13, the Compton Laboratories - 26, the Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier Education Center - 34, and the Brown Building - 39. RLE manages approximately 200,000 sqft of research space in these buildings as well as several other MIT campus spaces including buildings 10, and N10.

MIT Building 13 - Vannevar Bush Building

Over time, interdisciplinary research within RLE heavily influenced the modern research structure of MIT. RLE research served as the incubator for MIT Lincoln Laboratory[5], MIT’s Department of Linguistics, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC).

Modern Structure

Today, RLE has an annual research volume of approximately $80M derived from a variety of governmental, industrial, and charitable sponsors. It supports more than 70 Principal Investigators conducting research in Electrical Engineering, Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics, and Condensed Matter Physics. Since 2020, RLE has supported MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratory (MTL). It also supports MIT’s Center for Quantum Engineering (CQE), and MIT’s Grainger Electric Machines Facility, the successor to the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES), and the High Voltage Research Laboratory (HVRL).

Notable Contributions

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Norbert Wiener in 1963.

1948 — Following from RLE’s Norbert Wiener’s wartime development of filters that generate statistical estimates of a signal in the presence of noise, RLE doctoral student Thomas Cheatham, Jr. builds the first electronic analog correlator for communications systems,[6] paving the way for Henry Singleton’s digital correlator in 1949.[7]

1951 — RLE research in continental air defense, associated with MIT’s Project Charles, helps to spawn Lincoln Laboratory and ultimately the first computerized and integrated strategic air defense system for the U.S. Project SAGE.

1952 — RLE’s Jerrold Zacharias, James Yates, and R.D. Haun produce the first practical atomic clock, based on atomic beam frequency standards developed by Zacharias.

MIT TX-0 computer Philco surface-barrier transistors

1954 — The TX‑0 computer, constructed at Lincoln Laboratory, moves to RLE, where it hosts early imaginative tests of programming, including a Western movie shown on TV and 3‑D tic-tac-toe.

1955 — RLE’s Norbert Wiener John Barlow and Walter Rosenblith observe the auto-correlation function of brain waves, promoting the application of statistical communication techniques to communication biophysics.

1955 — Joseph R. Applegate comes to MIT to join RLE’s mechanical translation project. He becomes MIT’s first African-American faculty member when he is appointed Assistant Professor of Modern Languages the following year.

A cryotron (1959)

1956 — RLE’s Dudley A. Buck invents the cryotron, the first practical device exploiting superconductivity, which becomes a revolutionary component for miniaturizing the room-sized computers typical through the early 1950s.

Claude Shannon

1956 — Claude E. Shannon joins RLE’s Processing and Transmission of Information group. RLE begins collaboration with the new Eaton-Peabody Laboratory at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, where RLE’s Nelson Y.S. Kiang is the first director.

1957 — RLE moves into the Compton Laboratories (Building 26) with the Laboratory for Nuclear Science and MIT’s Computation Center.

1958 — RLE’s John McCarthy develops the LISP programming language that can manipulate symbolic expressions as well as code and debug major subroutines.

1959 — Robert N. Noyce, who had been a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Physical Electronics Group from 1949 to 1953, co-invents the integrated circuit at Fairchild Semiconductor which he co-founded in two years earlier. He later co-founds Intel in 1968.

Jerome Lettvin

1959 — RLE’s Jerome Lettvin and Walter Pitts publish their landmark neurophysiological research in the paper, “What the Frog’s Eye Tells the Frog’s Brain.”

1959 — Julius A. Stratton, RLE’s first Director, is appointed eleventh President of MIT.

1961 — The MIT Department of Linguistics is formed, with major part of its nucleus composed of RLE researchers in human communication.

1962 — RLE graduate research assistant Ivan E. Sutherland develops Sketchpad, the first interactive computer graphics program and the first graphical user interface (GUI). Sutherland later becomes a vice president of Sun Microsystems.

1962 — Project “Luna See,” conducted by RLE’s Louis Smullin and George Fiocco, demonstrates high-power optical maser technology by bouncing a laser beam off the moon’s surface. It was the first time outer space had been spanned by laser light.

1963 — J.C.R. Licklider, formerly of RLE, funds ARPA’s Project MAC at MIT with RLE’s Robert M. Fano as its first director. Project MAC spawns both the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Laboratory in 1970 and the Laboratory of Computer Science (LCS) in 1975. The two laboratories later merge to become the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in 2003.

1964 — Amar G. Bose, who joined RLE in 1953 as a graduate student working with RLE’s Yuk Wing Lee and Norbert Wiener in statistical communication theory, and who later conducted research in RLE on physical acoustics and psychoacoustics, founds Bose Corporation, which becomes an industry leader in commercial audio products and applications.

1968 — RLE’s David H. Staelin and E.C. Reifenstein, using radio telescopes, discover that the Crab Nebula contains a rapidly-rotating central star. This discovery helps to connect supernovae, neutron stars and pulsars.

1968 — RLE’s Thomas Huang uses an optical scanner to perform Fourier transform coding, and introduces the concept of coding in blocks smaller than the original image.[8]

Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Dr. Jerome Wiesner

1971 — Jerome B. Weisner, RLE’s third Director, is appointed thirteenth President of MIT.

1972 — RLE’s Bruno Coppi designs and constructs the first high-field toroidal plasma machine, the Alcator A tokamak.

1973 — A major portion of RLE moves into the new Sherman Fairchild Complex (Buildings 36 and 38).

1973 – RLE’s Rainer Weiss publishes “Electromagnetically Coupled Broadband Gravitational Antenna” Quarterly Reports of the Research Laboratory of Electronics MIT 105, p. 54 (1973). The work becomes the foundation for the development of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) recognized by the 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics.

1975 — RLE’s William F. Schreiber and Donald E. Troxel collaborate to produce the Laserphoto system for the Associate Press (AP), which quickly replaces all AP Wirephoto machines throughout the United States.[9]

1975 — RLE’s Alan V. Oppenheim and Ronald Schafer of the Georgia Institute of Technology publish “Digital Signal Processing,” which becomes the landmark textbook in the field.

1976 — MIT’s Plasma Fusion Center (now the Plasma Science and Fusion Center) is formed, with a significant part of its nucleus composed of RLE’s research in experimental plasma physics and engineering.

John G. Trump

1983 – HVRL’s John Trump posthumously wins National Medal of Science in Engineering Sciences for his "introduction of new methods for the beneficial application of ionizing radiation in medicine, industry and atomic physics.” After beginning his career developing high voltage sources with Robert Van der Graaff, Trump’s legacy included the development of rotational radiation therapy for cancer treatment.

1985 — Irwin M. Jacobs, a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Statistical Communication Theory Group in the 1950s and a member of the RLE faculty in the 1960s, founds Qualcomm, Inc., which becomes a global industry leader in advanced communication systems and products.

1987 — RLE’s Radio Astronomy group, led by RLE’s Bernard Burke, demonstrates the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Very Long Baseline Interferometer (VLBI) and produces the world’s first astronomical space-ground VLBI observations.

1988 – LEES Fred Schweppe, together with Michael Caramanis, Richard Tabors and Roger Bohn introduces spot pricing for electricity markets.[10]

Optical coherence tomography of human retina

1991 — RLE’s James G. Fujimoto, David Huang, together with Eric Swanson, invent optical coherence tomography (OCT) by exploiting low coherence interferometry. OCT becomes a revolutionary new technique to image biological structures non-invasively.

1995 — Bose-Einstein condensation is achieved by RLE’s Wolfgang Ketterle. His work improves on the first achievement of BEC by RLE alumnus Eric Cornell at the University of Colorado earlier in the year.

1995 — RLE’s Hermann A. Haus is awarded the National Medal of Science for his brilliant teaching and pioneering research, which spans fundamental investigations of quantum uncertainty as manifested in optical communications to the practical generation of ultra-short optical pulses.

1996 — The Federal Communications Commission adopts the Grand Alliance HDTV System, developed jointly by RLE’s Jae S. Lim, as the digital television standard for the United States. The work is recognized with an Emmy award in 1997.[11] HDTV broadcasts begin in the United States in 1998.

Wolfgang Ketterle

1997 — William D. Phillips, who was a graduate research assistant in RLE’s Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics group in the 1970s, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.

1998 — Robert B. Laughlin, who was a graduate research assistant with RLE’s John D. Joannopoulos in the late 1970s, is a co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations.

1999 — RLE’s original home—MIT’s Building 20, the Magical Incubator—is demolished to make way for the new Ray and Maria Stata Center.

2000 — RLE’s Kenneth N. Stevens is awarded the National Medal of Science for his pioneering contributions to the theory, mathematical methods and analysis of acoustics in speech production, leading to the contemporary foundations of speech science.

2001 — RLE’s Wolfgang Ketterle shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with RLE alumni Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman for the achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation and for early fundamental studies of the properties of the condensates.

Millie Dresselhaus

2011 – MTL’s Judy Hoyt and Eugene Fitzgerald are recognized for their development of high mobility strained silicon, winning the IEEE Andrew S. Grove award “for seminal contributions to the demonstration of Si/Ge lattice mismatch strain engineering for enhanced carrier transport properties in MOSFET devices.”[12]

2012 – MTL Former director Rafael Reif becomes MIT’s 17th President

2015 – RLE’s Millie Dresselhaus wins IEEE Medal of Honor for her contributions that helped modern define nanoscience and nanotechnology, including the first basic model for low-dimensional thermoelectrics and the Saito-Fujita-Dresselhaus Model for the band structures of carbon nanotubes.

Notable Awards

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1. Nobel Prizes

2001 Wolfgang Ketterle (Physics)[13]

2017 Rainer Weiss (Physics)[14]

2. National Medals of Science

1963 Norbert Wiener (Math)[15][16]

1966 Claude Shannon (Engineering)[17][18]

1983 John G. Trump (Engineering)[19]

1990 Millie Dresselhaus (Engineering)[20]

1990 John McCarthy (Math)[21]

1995 Herman Haus (Engineering)[22]

1999 Ken Stevens (Engineering)[23]

2002 Leo Beranek (Engineering)[24]

2006 Dan Kleppner (Physics)[25]

3. National Medals of Technology and Innovation

1994 Irwin Jacobs[26][27]

2023 Jim Fujimoto & Eric Swanson[28]

4. IEEE Medals of Honor[29]

1957 Julius Stratton[30]

1966 Claude Shannon[17][18]

1990 Bob Gallager[31]

2013 Irwin Jacobs[26][27]

2015 Millie Dresselhaus[20]

5. Emmy awards

1997 Jae S. Lim[11]

2017 Vivienne Sze[32]

Notable Alumni

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Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit & founder of Intel[33]

Amar Bose, founder Bose corporation[34]

Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm [26][27]

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD[35]

William Phillips, 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics[36]

Robert Laughlin, 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics[37]

Eric Cornell, 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics[38]

References

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  1. ^ a b c Leslie, Stuart W. (1993). The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. Columbia University Press.
  2. ^ a b "DTIC ADA187105: Proceedings of the Anniversary Symposium (40th) of the Joint Services Electronics Program (JSEP) Held in Washington, D.C. on September 25, 1986". Defense Technical Information Center. 1987 – via archive.org.
  3. ^ "Lab's funding stemmed from postwar government contract". MIT News. October 30, 1996.
  4. ^ Groupthink, Jonah Lehrer, New Yorker, January 22, 2012
  5. ^ Slayton, Rebecca (2012). From a "Dead Albatross" to Lincoln Labs: Applied Research and the Making of a Normal Cold War University. University of California Press. pp. 255–282.
  6. ^ T. P. Cheatham, Jr. "An Electronic Correlator,", Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical Report No. 122. March 28, 1951.
  7. ^ Singleton, Henry. "A Digital Electronic Correlator," (PDF). Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Technical Report No. 152. February 21, 1950.
  8. ^ Anderson, G.; Huang, T. (1971). "Piecewise Fourier Transformation for Picture Bandwidth Compression". IEEE Transactions on Communication Technology. 19 (2): 133–140. doi:10.1109/TCOM.1971.1090630. ISSN 2162-2175.
  9. ^ "How Newspapers Used Laser Beams to Transmit Photos in the 1970s,", Historic Images, April 25, 2023.
  10. ^ Fred C. Schweppe, Michael C. Caramanis, Richard D. Tabors, Roger E. Bohn, "Spot Pricing of Electricity,", Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston/Dordrecht/London, 1988. ISBN 978-1-4612-8950-0.
  11. ^ a b "Jae S. Lim Co-Recipient of 1997 Emmy Award,", Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 14, 1997.
  12. ^ "IEEE Andrew S. Grove Award Recipients (Formerly the IEEE Jack A. Morton Award),", IEEE Corporate Awards, PDF, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  13. ^ "Wolfgang Ketterle – Nobel Prize in Physics 2001,", NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  14. ^ "Rainer Weiss – Nobel Prize in Physics 2017,", NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  15. ^ Norbert Wiener, "Norbert Wiener — A Life in Cybernetics: Ex-Prodigy: My Childhood and Youth and I Am a Mathematician: The Later Life of a Prodigy,", The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, March 23, 2018. ISBN 978-0-262-53544-1.
  16. ^ "Norbert Wiener – National Medal of Science Laureate 1963,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  17. ^ a b Joe Horgan, "Claude Shannon: Tinkerer, Prankster, and Father of Information Theory,", IEEE Spectrum, April 27, 2016.
  18. ^ a b "Claude Shannon,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  19. ^ "John G. Trump – National Medal of Science Laureate 1983,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  20. ^ a b "Mildred Dresselhaus,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  21. ^ "John McCarthy – National Medal of Science Laureate 1990,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  22. ^ "Hermann A. Haus – National Medal of Science Laureate 1995,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  23. ^ "Kenneth N. Stevens – National Medal of Science Laureate 1999,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  24. ^ "Leo L. Beranek – National Medal of Science Laureate 2002,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  25. ^ "Daniel Kleppner – National Medal of Science Laureate 2006,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  26. ^ a b c "Irwin M. Jacobs,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  27. ^ a b c "Irwin M. Jacobs – National Medal of Technology and Innovation Laureate 1994,", National Science & Technology Medals Foundation, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  28. ^ "James Fujimoto awarded National Medal of Technology and Innovation,", AIMBE Fellowbook, retrieved October 24, 2023.
  29. ^ "IEEE Medal of Honor Recipients 1963–Present,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  30. ^ "Julius A. Stratton,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  31. ^ "Robert G. Gallager,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  32. ^ "Vivienne Sze shares Engineering Emmy Award with colleagues,", MIT News, 2017.
  33. ^ "Robert N. Noyce,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  34. ^ "Bose Timeline,", Bose Corporate Website, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  35. ^ "Lisa Su,", Engineering and Technology History Wiki, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  36. ^ "William D. Phillips – Nobel Prize in Physics 1997,", NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  37. ^ "Robert B. Laughlin – Nobel Prize in Physics 1998,", NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, retrieved August 11, 2025.
  38. ^ "Eric A. Cornell – Nobel Prize in Physics 2001,", NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize Outreach, retrieved August 11, 2025.
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