If you’re interested in the structure of scientific institutions, we’re living through remarkably exciting times. This past week I was corresponding with Gerald Holton, whose 1952 work I covered in my piece When do ideas get easier to find?. Holton, now 100 years old, is obviously spending less time actively working and keeping up with the fields in which he was prolific in his heyday.

Each piece in the MIT series can stand alone for the most part, but I’ve written them in such a way that they build off each other. So, I’d recommend reading Parts 1 and 2 before this piece for optimal pleasure. As was true of the last two pieces, the majority of the MIT-related information in this piece comes from Philip Alexander’s fantastic work of history called A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT.

Each piece in the MIT series can stand alone for the most part, but I’ve written them in such a way that they build off each other. So, I’d recommend reading Part 1 before this piece for optimal pleasure. As was true of the last piece, the majority of the MIT-related information in this piece comes from Philip Alexander’s fantastic work of history called A Widening Sphere: Evolving Cultures at MIT.

The MIT Series Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen opened their 2019 Atlantic piece that helped jump-start the progress studies movement with the following passage: In my eyes, MIT is entirely deserving of this honor: being used as the authors’ first example of an organization that generated progress.

It has been about three weeks since the last piece for the Engineering Innovation Substack. I apologize for the delay, but I think the delay will be worth it. I’ve been working on a series of (at least) three pieces that serve as a bit of a (short) progress studies history of MIT. This is a set of pieces that I specifically had in mind when I started this newsletter and I’m extremely excited to have the opportunity to share them with you all.

Several subscribers (mostly involved with the deep tech VC community) have requested that I write some pieces that look deeply at some programs that are already doing things well. This post is a bit of an experiment in doing just that. *If you like it, please let me know on Twitter.

I’m excited to announce that this is the first post of the Engineering Innovation Newsletter in partnership with Good Science Project. Good Science Project is a new organization dedicated to improving the funding and practice of science.

The public has a distorted view of science because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. - Freeman DysonSubscribe now Since the last article on WW2-era German science was so well-received, I’ve decided to keep the theme of great pieces of scholarship about scientific history going.

Subscribe now This Week’s Article The primary reason I’m writing this update is to inform subscribers that the article that was slated to come out this Friday will be a few days late. I came down with an infection this week and progress was a bit slow as a result. The planned article will incorporate a lot of ideas from Gerald Holton, a physicist/science historian and all-around fantastic thinker.

Bombing destruction at the Technical University of Berlin. (Circles indicate individual bombing impacts. Small triangles indicate destruction from artillery. Completely burned out buildings are shaded dark grey. Partially burned out buildings are shaded light grey. Destroyed roof structures are shaded with little dots.

This piece contains some longer excerpts from Watson’s writing about the discovery of DNA that tell the story far more beautifully than I ever could. The tale is full of false starts, randomness, and human flaws. I do my best to tie points together where necessary. But, for this piece, I let the story of the discovery of DNA itself be the star of the show. This week I began reading Flowers for Algernon.