Indian Institute of Technology

The Indian Institute of Technology is ranked 31st among the top 50 universities in the world for science.

It is the only university from India to come into reckoning in the survey.

The IIT family is huge and dispersed around the country. They include IIT-Kharagpur (1950), IIT-Mumbai (1958), IIT-Madras (1959) IIT-Kanpur (1960), IIT-Delhi (1961), IIT-Guwahati (1995) and IIT-Roorkee (2001).

The present name, the Indian Institute of Technology, was adopted before the formal inauguration of the Institute on August 18, 1951, by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad.

IIT-Kharagpur started its journey in the old Hijli Detention Camp, where some of our great freedom fighters toiled and sacrificed their lives for the independence of our country. This is possibly one of the very few institutions all over the world which started life in a prison house.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, in his first convocation address here in 1956, said, 'Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India's urges, India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India.'

Today, IIT offers undergraduate, integrated postgraduate and postgraduate degrees in over 25 different engineering, technology and business/management disciplines.

Information courtesy Indian Institute of Technology and individual IIT web sites.