Science & invention / Politics
Jerome Wiesner
1915–1994 · electrical engineer, science adviser, university president
President John F. Kennedy's science adviser and later president of MIT, born in Detroit and raised in Dearborn, where he attended Fordson High School.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Watertown, Massachusetts
aged 79- Birth name
- Jerome Bert Wiesner
- Also known as
- Jerome B. Wiesner
- Detroit years
- 1915–1930s
- Field
- Science & invention, Politics
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Wiesner was born in Detroit in 1915 to Jewish immigrants from Silesia and grew up in Dearborn, where he went to Fordson High School. At the University of Michigan he earned degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, worked as associate director of the university's radio broadcasting service and helped with acoustics at the National Music Camp at Interlochen. During World War II he developed microwave radar at MIT's Radiation Laboratory, and after the war he returned to MIT's Research Laboratory of Electronics. President Kennedy chose him in 1961 to chair the President's Science Advisory Committee, where he pressed for a nuclear test ban and questioned NASA's emphasis on crewed spaceflight. He went on to serve as president of MIT from 1971 to 1980 and helped found its Media Lab, housed in a building that bears his name.
Highlights
- Chair of President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee from 1961
- President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1971–1980
- Radar research at the MIT Radiation Laboratory in World War II
- Raised in Dearborn; Fordson High School; University of Michigan graduate
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1930s
Fordson High School
The Collegiate Gothic high school in Dearborn, built largely with Henry Ford's money and opened in 1928, where Wiesner was a student; a Michigan Historical Site since 1998.