MIT Pappalardo Distinguished Lecture in Physics

The MIT Physics Department is one of the best places in the world for research and education in physics. We have been ranked the number one physics department since 2002 by US News & World Report. In recent years we have produced the largest numbers of undergraduate and doctoral degrees in physics of any university in the US. Our successes are widely admired and emulated.

The Department has about 75 faculty, 220 undergraduate majors, and 230 graduate students. Our research is organized into four primary research areas, pushing back the frontiers of human understanding of space and time and of matter and energy in all its forms, from the subatomic to the cosmological and from the elementary to the complex. We have had four Nobel Prize winners since 1990. Four of our alumni have won Nobel Prizes since 1998, which reflects the outstanding quality of students we attract and the superb education they receive.

The Department has been the source of innovation in physics education for decades. Seven members of our Department have won the Oersted Medal, the most prestigious award of the American Association of Physics Teachers. Our most recent educational initiatives are the Technology Enabled Active Learning approach to freshman physics, and an alternative flexible SB degree that has helped to more than double the number of physics majors since a decade ago.