"The Magical Incubator," a day-long celebration to honor the people and achievements of the past 55 years in Building 20, will be held in the EG&G Education Center (Building 34) on Friday, March 27, featuring many MIT alumni and faculty who worked in the building.
The morning session, beginning with comments by Provost Joel Moses, will include talks by moderator Paul L. Penfield, Jr. (SB '60), head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Theodore Saad (SB '41), former staff member at the Radiation Laboratory; Walter E. Morrow Jr. (SB '49), retiring director of Lincoln Laboratory; Peter Elias (SB '44), professor emeritus of electrical engineering; and Rainer Weiss (SB '55), professor of physics.
The afternoon session will be moderated by Assistant Professor Gill Pratt (SB '83) of EECS. Speakers will include Jerome V. Lettvin (SB '47), professor emeritus of electrical engineering and bioengineering; Institute Professor Emeritus Morris Halle; Peter T. Demos (SB '51), professor emeritus of physics; and Professor Robert P. Redwine of physics.
In addition, James D. Worden (SB '89), co-founder and CEO of Solectria Corp., will speak about MIT's Solar Electric Vehicle Club, and Alan Kotok (SB '62), associate chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium, will discuss the Tech Model Railroad Club. Both clubs were headquartered in Building 20. Farewell walk-throughs of the building will be offered during the day.
The day's events will be followed by a dinner in honor of Maria and Ray Stata (SB '57), founder and chairman of Analog Devices, Inc. A new complex of buildings devoted to intelligence sciences will be built on the site and named for the Statas.
For additional information, about the March 27 celebration, contact Vera Sayzew at x3-4624. A complete program is available online. Reminiscences of life inside the "magical incubator" can be found on web sites created by Research Laboratory of Electronics and EECS.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 18, 1998.
