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Why Cornell Engineering?
"Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that never has been."—Theodore von Karman
Cornell engineers challenge the status quo and do great things. Steeped in an environment of questioning, and with a focus on innovation, Cornell Engineering pursues excellence in all areas. Its faculty, students, and alumni design, build, and test products, improve the world of medicine, inform and shape our laws, create and drive businesses, become research luminaries, and overcome real and perceived barriers to achieve scientific breakthroughs that advance the quality of life on our planet.
We invite you to learn more about Cornell Engineering and its programs.
Did you know?
The electric organ (Hammond Organ) was invented in 1934 by Laurens Hammond (Mechanical Engineering, 1916). This inexpensive alternative to costly pipe organs found immediate popularity with churches, ball parks and ice rinks. Later, the instrument became the default choice for many keyboardists in rock, jazz and blues.
Cornell was the first among all U.S. colleges and universities to allow undergraduates to borrow books from its libraries.
F.C. Moon has made contributions to nonlinear and chaotic dynamics of mechanical systems. He was one of the first to develop experimental tools of analysis in nonlinear vibrations based on Poincare maps and fractal measures of chaos. His laboratory at Cornell, nicknamed the "Moon Lab" hosted nearly 100 research students and visitors during the period 1975-2000.
Prof. Juris Hartmanis was the founder and first chairman of Cornell's department of computer science—one of the first computer science departments in the world. In 1965,he wrote a seminal paper with Richard E. Stearns establishing foundations for the field of computational complexity theory. In 1993, Hartmanis was awarded the A.M. Turing Award recognizing the importance of these ideas.
George Winter's (Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering, 1940) research led to the first publication in 1946 of the American Iron and Steel Institute Specification for the Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members. Most of the research and the writing of this code can be attributed to George Winter. It soon became the world-recognized standard for this type of construction and has been published abroad in many languages.