Walter Rosenblith

Walter Rosenblith was a biophysicist who became a research fellow at Harvard in 1947 and joined the MIT faculty in 1951 as an associate professor of communications biophysics in the Department of Electrical Engineering. He was elevated to full professor in 1957, and was named Institute Professor in 1975. He served as MIT’s associate provost from 1969 to 1971 and its provost from 1971 to 1980. He served as director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies of MIT and Harvard during his tenure as associate provost at MIT. One of the few scholars elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, Rosenblith fostered efforts to better understand the interplay among science, technology, and society.