The MIT Press

The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT published a lecture series entitled Problems of Atomic Dynamics by the visiting German physicist and later Nobel Prize winner, Max Born. In 1932, MIT established the imprint Technology Press.

This imprint was founded by James R. Killian, Jr., then editor of MIT's alumni magazine, Technology Review, and later MIT's 11th president. Technology Press published eight titles independently until 1937, when it entered into an arrangement with John Wiley & Sons in which Wiley took over distribution and editorial responsibilities. Wiley and the press published 125 titles together until their association ended in 1962. Since then, the press, a unit of MIT, has published independently of other publishers.

In 1961, Technology Press was renamed the MIT Press, and in 1962 Carroll Bowen was appointed the MIT Press's first director. During his tenure, the press significantly expanded its title output, resulting in higher sales and income from rights licensing. Additionally, Muriel Cooper, the press's inaugural design director, was hired, sparking a visual transformation that established the MIT Press's reputation for innovative and daring design. In 1964, Cooper created the MIT Press's colophon that continues to serve as the brand's identifying symbol.

In 1969, a journals division was added, and in 1970 a European marketing office was opened. Following Bowen's departure the same year, Howard R. Webber was appointed director of the press.

In 1975, Frank Urbanowski was appointed director and brought about new initiatives for the press. In response to the economic downturn, Urbanowski refined MIT Press's publishing strategy. The press focused on publishing deeply within a more limited range of subjects that reflected MIT's strengths. These areas included: architecture and arts, computer science and artificial intelligence, economics/finance, brain and cognitive science, neuroscience, and environmental studies. The MIT Press Bookstore opened in Kendall Square in 1980 to showcase its distinctive publications and serve the Cambridge community.

Between 1992 and 1994, the MIT Press developed an online catalog, one of the first launched by a publisher, and in 1995 published its first fully open access book, City of Bits: Space, Place and the Infobahn by William J. Mitchell. In 1996, the press designed and then deployed CogNet, a prime resource for researchers, academicians, professionals, and students interested in the broad field of study and discourse in cognitive and brain sciences. That same year, the press debuted its first electronic-only journal, Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science.

Frank Urbanowski retired from the MIT Press in 2003, and Ellen Faran became director. In 2011, the MIT Press launched the Essential Knowledge Series, a growing collection of accessible, concise books written by leading thinkers on topics ranging from the cultural and historical to the scientific and technical.

Amy Brand was named Director and Publisher of the MIT Press in 2015. The press transitioned its worldwide sales and distribution to Penguin Random House Publisher Services in July 2020. In 2021, the MIT Press launched Direct to Open, a collective action open access business model for scholarly monographs. This initiative allows the press to make many of its scholarly monographs and edited collections freely available to the public.

Since 1980, the MIT Press Bookstore has been a regional attraction in the heart of the Kendall Square technology and innovation hub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The bookstore is one of a small number of such outlets operated by any university publisher. It has offered a complete selection of press titles for browsing and retail purchase, plus a large selection of complementary works from other academic and trade publishers, including magazines and academic journals.

Starting in October 2016, the bookstore was temporarily relocated to Central Square, just north of the original location of the MIT Museum, because of extensive construction in Kendall Square. In 2022, the bookstore moved into a new building at 314 Main Street, adjacent to a newly renovated subway entrance to Kendall/MIT station. Sharing the same building, in 2022 the MIT Museum moved to Kendall Square for the first time, including its newly expanded museum store.

The relocated bookstore has adopted the slogan "Kendall Square's Underground Bookstore", acknowledging its underground location below the MIT Museum (although with a large opening affording a direct view into its space from the street). In addition to expanding its coverage of academic and technical publications in both the sciences and the humanities, the MIT Press Bookstore features an expanded kid-friendly area dedicated to educational books for children and pre-teens. The bookstore also features a selection of travel and historical guides to Boston and the surrounding region, from a variety of publishers.