Barbara Wallraff

The Merriam-Webster dictionary contains around 470,000 words. Where do they all come from? And why can we still not find the one we’re looking for? Writer and editor Barbara Wallraff explores the creation of new words. The most famous coiner of words may be William Shakespeare. But, as Wallraff notes, this aspect of his reputation is complicated. He was writing at a time before we collected all English words into dictionaries.

From its laid-back hackers to its rigorous academics, MIT can be a bewildering place for the uninitiated. From 1925 to the 1940s, a multi-day “Freshman Camp” was held at Lake Massapoag, featuring talks, sports, and traditions like dunking the sophomore class president. Today, first-years learn about campus culture during Orientation/Residence Exploration (REX) week. Find out a bit more about the Class of 2022 and the experiences of previous generations with this compilation of first-year facts.

Last October, Aviv Regev spoke to a gathering of international scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science. For Regev, a computational and systems biologist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the gathering was also a homecoming of sorts. Regev earned her PhD from nearby Tel Aviv University in 2002. Now, 15 years later, she was back to discuss one of the most ambitious projects in the history of biology.