MIT World

Dr. Sylvia Nasar, the author of "A Beautiful Mind" tells the extraordinary story of mathematician John Nash…

Wouldn’t it be exciting, Stephen Wolfram wonders, to have a little computer program that could function as a precise, ultimate model of our universe?

Somehow Arnold Barnett manages to massage the subject of airline accidents into a breezy and sometimes comforting talk on statistical probabilities

Barack Obama came to MIT not just to praise the Institute's leading edge energy research but to encourage all of America’s “heirs to a legacy of innovation” in their pursuit of discovery.

In this lecture Elly Nedivi provides an overview on the basics of brain anatomy, working her way up the spinal column to the deepest recesses of the cerebral cortex.

We often take it for granted that we know the difference between a cat and a dog. Where and how do we store the visual information that categorizes “catness” in our minds, so that the next time we see a cat, we know that it is not a dog?

Without much national fanfare, Chicago has transformed itself into a paragon of green virtue.

Some people believe the planet would be better off, at least ecologically, if humans had never evolved. These speakers offer grim evidence that human activities threaten to poison much of life on earth, but they also suggest some new methods for treading more lightly, and perhaps reversing some deadly trends.

Roughness is ubiquitous and a major sensory input of Man. The first step to measure and simulate it was provided by fractal geometry.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan recaps 35 years of key findings, and brings his audience up to date on the latest climate data, models, and observations which together demonstrate how CO2 is but one piece of a complex puzzle.

If you’re worried about getting cancer, do yourself a favor: steer clear of red meat and rich foods, and avoid cigarettes. In this lecture, Robert Weinberg provides the scientific basis for this commonplace advice…

The Council on Primary and Secondary Education 2002 summer program hosted 70 pre-college teachers at MIT to attend MIT Physics Professor Walter Lewin's inspired talk about physics.

The rising public awareness of climate change, says MIT President Susan Hockfield, comes with a price. “The public dialogue has evolved from nothing is wrong, so we need to do nothing, to everything is so wrong, that there’s nothing we can do."

Ignore the noisy debate around cloning, Rudolf Jaenisch quietly insists, and instead look closely at the biology involved.

During the human lifetime, there are 10 million billion cell divisions and each division represents, as Robert Weinberg puts it, “an opportunity for disaster, for chaos to occur.”

Physicist and art collector Walter Lewin shares his personal insights into major works of art from the first quarter of the 20th century.

In this talk, leading genetist Rudolf Jaenisch delivers a clear overview of the challenges facing the cloning, dispelling many of the misconceptions about cloning that are pervasive in popular media.

No diagnosis of cancer is welcome, but some scenarios are more dreaded than others. Richard Hynes discusses what happens “when cells in the primary tumor lose their sense of address and wander off to places they’re not supposed to go.”

In labs around the world, mice learn to navigate complex mazes, locate chocolaty rewards, and after an interval, run the mazes again with maximum efficiency, swiftly collecting all the sweets. But in Susumu Tonegawa’s lab, the mutant mice he has created cannot perform these tasks.

Philosophers have long sought to answer questions about who we are, where we come from and where we’re going.

The subject of cloning can instantly spark passionate debate: Will it enable us to resurrect beloved family members, or create Frankensteins? Rudolf Jaenisch wants to remove “hot air” from the discussion.

In this lecture Mario Molina defines the causes of global warming as a direct result of human behavior.

Walter Lewin answers the perennial question, "why is the sky blue?" and creates a red sunset in the laboratory.

High hopes meet high frustration in this panel, whose participants collectively yearn for a new vision to guide our space program.

You wouldn’t know that Alan Alda felt nervous in advance of addressing this audience of neuroscientists. In his trademark style, Alda chats up the crowd like an old friend, sharing anecdotes involving one of his great pursuits: “I love to talk to scientists,” he says.