Jerome B. Wiesner; White House Aide, MIT President

Jerome B. Wiesner, a science adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and past president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has died. He was 79.

Wiesner died at his home late Friday after an unspecified illness that lasted several months, MIT spokesman Ken Campbell said. Wiesner suffered a stroke several years ago.

He was president of MIT from 1971 to 1980 and a member of the President’s Science Advisory Committee from 1961 to 1964.

“He was a humanitarian. The issues that were most important to him were peace, disarmament, education,” said his son, Zachary. “I think he enjoyed working for the government, but he loved MIT.”

After his retirement from MIT, Wiesner was a founding member of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, a group of U.S. and Soviet scientists and educators that raised money for research on global problems.

Born in Detroit, Wiesner joined the MIT radiation laboratory in 1942 after directing the University of Michigan’s broadcasting service and working as chief engineer for the acoustical record lab of the Library of Congress.

He worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1945 to 1946, then returned to MIT as a professor of electrical engineering, eventually rising to department head in 1959.

He is survived by his wife, Laya W. Wiesner, and four children.