MIT.edu  

Engineering:

1882 - MIT establishes, within the Department of Physics,
       the nation's first curriculum in electrical engineering.
1934 - Harold Edgerton and Kenneth Germeshausen produce a stroboscope for
      high speed photography.

Computing:

1925 - Vannevar Bush develops analog computers, culminating in the
   Differential Analyzer in the early 1940's
1960 - Ivan Sutherland develops "sketchpad", a graphical drawing program.
     It leads to computer-aided design (CAD) software.
1950's - Jay Forrester develops the magnetic core memory.
1959 - John McCarthy invents LISP, the computer programming language
  used in artificial intelligence research.
1975 - Barbara Liskov designs the CLU programming language forming the basis
    for languages like Java and C#.
1977 - Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman invent the first workable
  public key cryptography system (RSA)

Physical Science:

1934 Robert Van de Graaff and John Trump construct a million-volt x-ray generator,
   which is widely used in cancer therapy.
1940's MIT's Radiation Lab develops microwave radar.
1957 - John Sheehan achieves the first chemical synthesis of penicillin.
1973 - Jerome Friedman and Henry Kendall complete experiments demonstrating the 
  existance of quarks. 1990 Nobel Prize

Biology+life sciences:

1800's - William Sedgwick traces the Mass. typhoid fever epidemic to contaminated water
  Foundation of public health and father of epidemiology in the U.S.
1887 - Ellen Swallow Richards - Establishes modern water safety and sanitation standards.
1959 - Jerome Lettvin's research on perception and animal behavior leads to the discovery
   of "feature detectors" a key development in understanding visual perception.
1960 - Hans-Lukas Teuber identifies areas of the brain 
  responsible for specific functions.
1960's - Salvador Luria makes pioneering advances in viral genetics.
  1969 Nobel Prize in physiology or Medicine.
1969 - Ioannis Yannas begins developing artificial skin for burn victoms.
1976 - Har Gobind Khorana and colleagues synthesize the first manufactured gene
  fully functional in a living cell. 1968 Nobel Prize for other work.
1985 - Susumu Tonegawa describes the structure of the gene for the receptors
 "anchor molecules" on the immune system's master cells.  1987 Nobel Prize.
1985 Robert Horvitz identifies the first two genes responsible for cell death.
  2002 Nobel Prize.

1923 - Norbert Wiener provides the foundation for stochastic processes.
   His 1948  book Cybernetics describes the interaction of man and electronics.

Economics and Management:

1940's and 50's - Paul Samuelson applies mathematical techniques to economic analysis
  Wins the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1970
1950's - Franco Modigliani develops the "life-cycle" theory of savings and
  theory of corporate finance.  1985 Nobel Prize.
1961 - RObert Solow formulates one of tahe first general models of economic growth.
   1987 Nobel Prize.
  

Architecture:
Links:
Innovation and inventions @ MIT News
MIT Spectrum > innovation+inventions
Inventor of the Week: Archive