MIT 开学典礼上校长的讲话

Freshman Convocation 2007
26 August 2007
Good morning, and welcome, MIT class of 2011. And welcome al so to the families and friends who have come to help launch a new chapter in our students’ lives.
Each academic year begins with the excitement of formally welc oming our new students into the MIT community at this Freshm an Convocation. Convocation –a calling together –is a chance t o offer words of introduction, and also some –but I hope not t oo many –words of advice.
I am joined here on the platform by a group of people who will play key roles in your lives over the next few years. You will h ear shortly from our Chancellor, Professor Phillip Clay, and then from our Dean for Undergraduate Education, Professor Daniel Ha stings. Also joining us are the Provost and Associate Provosts, th e Secretary and Vice President for Institute Affairs, the Deans of the Institute’s five Schools, the Dean for Student Life, the Chair of the Faculty, and the housemasters of the undergraduate resi dence halls. The president of the Undergraduate Association, Mar tin Holmes, is also here to greet you. We come together here to celebrate your arrival at MIT.
Your MIT chapter begins on the shoulders of history. Look above, at the names etched in stone along the frieze of Killian Court, and you will see in those names the story not simply of one sch ool, nor even of science and engineering alone, but of knowledg e itself. Our predecessors were pioneers of discovery who led hu manity’s progress from the ancient to the modern world. Today, as we welcome you to MIT, we welcome you as the heirs of his tory and the inventors of the future.
And we welcome you as heirs to a motto: Mens et manus, Mind and hand –the MIT motto that we live every day. At MIT, we value brilliance. That’s why you’re he re. But along with the mind that reaches over the horizon, we value the hand that reaches out –that helps, that collaborates, that makes the world a bette r place.
Not a single name on this frieze got there on brains or brilliance alone. They were dreamers, and they were discoverers, and the y were diligent.
This morning, you take your place in their tradition. You take yo ur place in a time of great challenge and even greater opportuni ty. You take it in the shadow of names like Aristotle and Newto n, DaVinci and Descartes, Franklin and Faraday.
No problem. No pressure. Right?
Well, that’s easy for me to say. But I say it with confidence. We selected you for the class of 2011 because we know that each of you has the intelligence and the character not just to “s urviv e” at MIT, but to truly thrive here. You arrive with several distin ctions already under your belts.
Only the brightest even apply to MIT –and your applications, wi th a good many others, formed the largest and most competitive pool of applicants in our history. Many other distinctions mark t his class. Among you are science and math Olympians, winners of the nation’s most prestigious academic prizes, circus performe rs, varsity athletes, at least one cow breeder, world-class musici ans, and entrepreneurs. Simply put, you have extraordinary cred entials in every way they could be measured.
But beyond these not inconsiderable accomplishments of your o wn, another distinction singles out this class. MIT was founded i n 1861. The class of 2011 –your class –wi ll graduate in MIT’s 150th year. Your names will be recorded in our history as MIT’s sesquicentennial class. And over the course of your senior year you will join in the celebration of this important milestone.
But each of you knows already that MIT is far more than its pa st, that our real task here is to invent the future. The study of t he history you inherit only sets the foundation for the history yo u will make.
MIT was founded to apply knowledge and its advance to making the world a better place. This institution stands at the intersect ion of the abstract and the applied –of science and society –of discovery that ennobles our understanding and discovery that tr ansforms our lives.
MIT is part of one of the greatest stories of humankind: the sto ry of discovery turned to human good. Let me give you just one example: The voyage to the moon and the lunar landing were made possible by guidance, navigation, and control systems deve loped by MIT's Instrumentation Lab. Apollo 11 astronaut, Buzz A
ldrin, who received his PhD from MIT's Aero/Astro department, was the second man to set foot on the moon and one of four C ourse 16 graduates to walk on the moon.
MIT’s tradition of putting great theories into action transcends s cience and engineering, reaching into other disciplines, and bring ing forth other world-changing discoveries and inventions. They i nclude the humanities and the arts, entrepreneurship and urban planning: MIT faculty and students were on the ground in New Orleans two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, working with local g roups and institutions to address housing, sustainable developme nt, and alternative energy.
MIT’s leadership also includes marketing, linguistics and economi cs. In fact, today, the heads of five central banks –Stanley Fisc her in Israel; Mario Draghi in Italy; Athanasios Orphanides in Cy prus; Vittorio Corbo in Chile and, of course, Ben Bernanke here i n the United States –all have degrees in Economics from MIT. Today we travel on a trail blazed by the discoverers whose nam es ring Killian Court. Each name bears a remarkable story. Let m e today tell the story of just one –a story of science and techn ology, but also a story of business and society, of tenacity, of di scovery, and of impact –the story of Louis Pasteur.
Pasteur was born in 1822. He worked in France, in the same er a that another brilliant scientist –this one named William Barto n Rogers –began an extraordinary project here in America: crea ting an institution of learning to serve an industrialized age. MIT began in 1861 on Boylston Street in Boston, where it was kno wn as Boston Tech before moving to this site in 1916. You can read our founding mission ringing the lobby of Building 7: ”Esta blished for advancement and development of science, its applicat ion to industry, the arts, agriculture, and commerce.”
Pasteur, in like mind, made extraordinary scientific discoveries th at he turned to practical use. He used the technology of his day –a microscope that seems quite simple to us today –to establ ished the field of stereochemistry, discovering that only the dext ro rotary form of tartaric acid was taken up by the microorganis m responsible for the fermentation of wine. As dean of the new science faculty at the University of Lille, he established a relatio nship between the university and local industry so that theory c ould be turned into practice. (You know,) in grade school we all learned about Pasteur debunking the mythology of spontaneous
generation, but less commonly known is his extension of that s eminal discovery to understanding the cause and determining th e cure for animal and human diseases.
Pasteur did all this not simply through intelligence, but intelligen ce amplified by diligence. “Chance favors only those minds which are prepared,” he famously said. Less famously, his fav orite mo tto “Travailler, travailler, travailler toujours,” directs one to work, work, work always.
Pasteur understood that we cannot realize the full promise of sci ence, if we do not open avenues for its application to people’s li ves. “There is no greater charm for the investigator,” Pasteur sai d, “than to make new discoveries; but his pleasure is heightened when he sees that they have a direct application to practical lif e.”
And by that measure, your time at MIT –and your careers that lie ahead –will be pleasurable indeed.
MIT walks –as you do –in Pasteur’s footsteps. That’s true in a very practical sense –because the work he began continues he re.
Pasteur's discovery that yeast was responsible for the fermentati on process and that contamination by other microorganisms turn ed beer sour advanced the beverage industry of 19th century Fr ance, but it also laid the foundation for experimental work with yeast that continues at MIT today. Professor Susan Lindquist of the Department of Biology and the Whitehead Institute uses yea st to study the proteins that give rise to Parkinson’s Disease, a debilitating degenerative neurological disorder. The yeast strains carrying the protein implicated in Parkinson’s disease also provid e a platform to search for preventive and therapeutic drugs. Pasteur’s breakthroughs during the infancy of experimental biom edicine gave rise to the vast engine of biomedical research and products we enjoy today. But biomedical breakthroughs now pro vide tools for other disciplines. The convergence of the life scien ces with engineering reaches well past biomedicine to batteries, to biofuels, and beyond.
But we stand in Pasteur’s footsteps in another sense too. We e mbody what he taught –the importance of attention to the fine st detail, the value of diligence, the promise of science that tran
sforms people’s lives. These are the lessons you will learn from us, your faculty, –and from each other.
Look around you. Your classmates are extraordinarily accomplish ed. And you have an advantage Pasteur lacked: This, the most d iverse class in MIT’s history, arrives on our campus with a range of perspectives Pasteur could hardly have imagined. Your class comes from 49 states, three American territories and the District of Columbia, and from 58 other countries. We come together o n this campus from a variety of backgrounds, united in our purs uit of truth. Pasteur observed that, “Science knows no country b ecause knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which il luminates the world.” Indeed, talent, bril liance and tenacity tran scend geographic, ethnic and racial boundaries. Your class, your generation, will push the frontiers further precisely because your perspectives are broader.
The rich mix of students and faculty on this campus will expand your horizons, inside and outside the classroom. I hope that all of you will take advantage of one of MIT’s signature offerings, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, in which our students work in research groups in every discipline on the ca mpus. I know that you’ll also embrace the wide variety of living groups, athletics and activities that demand in a different way t he same passion and engagement as your academic pursuits. Opportunities begin here on campus but reach across the globe.
I further hope that most of you will have an international experi ence some time during your years at MIT. Many students take o n an international internship through MISTI, the MIT Internation al Science and Technology Initiatives. As part of a project to hel p improve educati on standards in China’s western provinces, MIT students traveled to the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau to introduce Qi nghai University faculty and students to MIT-OCW subjects in bi otechnology, computer science, and environmental engineering. O thers apply their problem solving skills in the developing world t hrough D-lab, designing locally-sensitive solutions to water purifi cation. One of MIT’s great internationalists, Professor Dick Samu els from the Department of Political Science and director of our Center for International Studies, has joined us on the platform t his morning. I have invited Professor Samuels to deliver your fir st academic lecture Tuesday in Kresge Auditorium, to share with you some of the excitement of MIT’s global reach.
As you consider which subjects to take, activities to take up, livi ng groups to join, know that what brought you here –and what you will learn here –are the same qualities for which MIT grad uates are known around the world. At MIT, we are intensely an alytical. Through the seemingly endless problem sets, you will le arn a way of thinking and a way of solving problems that arise not just in classroom assignments, but in life. You will learn by doing –through hands-on experience.
That much you know. But you will learn other critical lessons th at we discuss less often but that matter just as much. These les sons transcend the laboratory and classroom. They are lessons i n leadership, and they are lessons in life. MIT students have tra nsformed lives through their work in the Cambridge public schoo ls and with communities in developing countries. And beyond th e great good they have done for others, they have also learned how to maximize the work of teams, how to lead, how to engag e with people and cultures different from their own, and they ha ve also learned the important art of persuasive rhetoric.
Your experiences at MIT will expand and amplify the remarkable accomplishments you bring with you today. We hope, no –we expect –that you will use the full sum of your talents to make the world a better place.
I’ve welcomed you today in the context of history. But the most interesting history lies before us: the history you will make, the future you will invent.
I cannot tell you what that future will be. Besides, that would s poil the fun –mine as much as yours. The thrill of serving as M IT’s president is finding myself every day in a future I had not yet imagined. It’s a future of your making. If you want to see t he history that has been, look up –at the names above Killian Court. If you want to see the history yet to come, look around –at the MIT class of 2011. Welcome to the epicenter of science and engineering –of economics and entrepreneurship and globa l studies and urban planning and more. MIT is where science an d society converge.
W e’re counting on you to make our world a better place. So: wo rk hard –and you must. Reach broadly –and you can. Embrace our history and invent our future –and this, I know, you will. Welcome to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.。