Famous Professors Teaching Classes Thread

[pbleic]

I was hoping to start a thread where knowledgeable people could list well known professors who teach undergraduate courses. I will post this on both the MIT and Harvard sites. I am sure it won't be exhaustive, but perhaps it can give a flavor for some of the opportunities available to students considering the school.

Cut and paste the list and expand it in your subsequent posts. Thanks!

Professor, Name of Course (no numbers), Approximate Size of Class, Level (Freshman -F, Advanced -AU, Graduate (open to Freshman) -G)

example:

John Q. Professor, Intro to Biology, 250, F
Sally Jones, Economics of Online Forums, 12, AU

[differential]

Or you could just use OCW. In any case, this seems like a really bad way for prospective students to decide which school to choose. Also at MIT, many courses change prof's every other term.

[pbleic]

You are correct that this shouldn't be a major factor, but it is just one of many, many pieces of information. Princeton makes a big deal about contact with famous faculty. Students may be interested to know that other schools have similar exposure - even if they can't depend on a particular one from year to year.

[arwen15]

My homemade list....(of course there are a gadzillion others)....

21W.755 Writing and Reading Short Stories taught by Junot Diaz
(in the past)

MAS.731J The Society of Mind taught by Marvin Minsky

10-250 sometimes(?) has lectures by Richard Schrock (Nobel Laureate)
Linda Griffith and Eric Lander in Course 20 (Both MacArthur Fellows)

8.012 Frank Wilczek and Wolfgang Ketterle (Nobel Laureates) sometimes are TAs if you can believe that! WoW! How many schools other than MIT
have Nobel Laureates as TAs....(Princeton, Caltech, ....?)

[molliebatmit]

In the biology department, professors are required to teach at least one course every year, and undergraduates are encouraged to take graduate courses, so undergraduates could have any professor in the biology department if they were interested in doing so.

For example, I had Tyler Jacks (cancer god) in intro biology my freshman year, Susumu Tonegawa (Nobel Laureate) in a small graduate seminar during my sophomore year, Rudy Jaenisch (one of the top embryonic stem cell people in the world) in a small seminar my senior year, and others, of course. (The difficulty of doing an analysis like this is that the MIT bio department is somewhat small, but exceedingly high-quality, so basically all of the professors in the department are famous in the scientific world.)

[collegealum314]

The short answer is that they all do, unless they are really old. I met 5 or 6 Nobel Laureates while I was at MIT and only one of them didn't teach undergrads. I suspect that was because he was in his late 70's...

And it's true that it's not unusual for famous professors to end up as your TA. That happened too.

[jessiehl]

Having a prof teach you is not the only way to have contact with the prof, you know. Many students work for famous profs as UROPs or have them as departmental advisors, or thesis supervisors. I had a Nobel Laureate as my freshman advisor. Senior Haus' housemaster is legendary media scholar Henry Jenkins.