Leighton family leads the way in supporting MIT mathematics

Tom Leighton’s lifelong love for mathematics has taken him far beyond his childhood goal of teaching his favorite subject. As an MIT mathematics PhD who joined the faculty in 1982, Leighton played an early role in establishing theoretical computer science in the Department of Mathematics.

A popular lecturer, Leighton still occasionally teaches the 100-plus students who regularly enroll in “Mathematics for Computer Science,” a subject he helped design through the departments of mathematics and electrical engineering and computer science. But it’s Leighton’s achievements at Akamai Technologies, which he co-founded in 1998, that have earned him worldwide recognition as one of the Top 10 Technology Innovators in U.S. News & World Report. Akamai, based in Cambridge, Mass., is the leading global service provider for accelerating content and business processes online. As chief scientist, Leighton is Akamai’s technology visionary as well as a key member of the team that sets the company’s direction.

A preeminent authority on algorithms for network applications, Leighton, through Akamai, created the world’s largest distributed computing platform that dynamically routes content and applications across a network of more than 18,000 servers. At MIT, Leighton serves as head of the Algorithms Group in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

As the World Wide Web developed, Leighton recalled, so did the worldwide wait. In 1995, many Internet users found the level of congestion terribly frustrating. Leighton recognized that the solution to web congestion could be found in applied mathematics and algorithms. With graduate student Danny Lewin, Leighton developed the mathematical algorithms to handle the routing of content.

Leighton will tell you that running a company is a whole different experience from being a math professor. “For starters, summer isn’t much different from the other three seasons. However, the culture at Akamai is like MIT in that it’s intense, challenging and you get to work with really smart people, many from MIT. Most of all there’s a prevailing attitude that you can do anything if you work hard enough,” he said.

Leighton is determined to spread the word that MIT’s math department is a fantastic environment for teaching and research.

“When it comes to fundraising, the math department is probably at the bottom of the totem pole. It shouldn’t be, because it’s the leading department of mathematics with the best and the brightest,” he said. “I want to give back to the department that has been instrumental in the success of my career and I want to help the department remain strong.”

For information on making a gift to the Mathematics Department, please contact Senior Director of Development for Mathematics Erin McGrath Tribble at or 617-452-2807.

This was originally published in the 2007 Integral.