Humans of MIT: Devin Neal, 2014

Humans of MIT: Devin Neal, 2014
Humans of MIT

Devin Neal juggles near Killian Court, 25 April 2014.

[Juggling is] really fun because a lot of people get really interested in it, and then they learn and they can teach other people in juggling groups. It's a cool thing.

Devin A. Neal '17

 

Humans of MIT

In 2014, four MIT students created Humans of MIT, a Facebook portrait-blog inspired by Brandon Stanton's Humans of New York, that captures life in the MIT community through a single photo and the subject’s own words.

MIT Juggling Club

The MIT Juggling Club is the oldest "drop in" juggling club in continuous operation in the world. The club was started in March 1975 and merged with a unicycle club that started in 1973.  "Across the years," reports Stacy Kess in the Cambridge Day (2/18/23), the club has "attracted a cross-section of humanity: young, old, students, professors, people who changed the course of the world, artists, writers, performers and the juggling-curious":

[MIT alum Arthur Lewbel] said among the more famous drop-ins to the club have been mathematician Claude Shannon, an avid unicyclist who dabbled in juggling before attending the club. While with the MIT Juggling Club, he developed the first mathematical theorem of juggling: (F+D)H = (V+D)N, in which F equals how long a ball stays in the air; D equals how long a ball is held in a hand; H equals the number of hands; V equals how long a hand is empty; and N equals the number of balls being juggled. Basically, one side of the equation tracks how much time hands spend juggling balls; the other side tracks the time balls are juggled.

Father of high-speed photography Harold “Doc” Edgerton was another famous attendee of the club as an MIT professor. Though Edgerton didn’t participate, he would drop in to invite jugglers to his studio.

Timeline: 2010s
School: School of Science
Department: Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceMathematics
Career: CommunityScience
Object: Image
Collection: Humans of MIT, Rising Voices 1995-Present, Students