Harvard University

Harvard University
the oldest US university and usually considered the best. Harvard is one of the Ivy League universities. It was established as a college in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Two years later, it was named after John Harvard, a Puritan born in England who had given it money and books. Harvard is especially famous for its faculties (= departments) of law and business. Its library is the oldest in the US and one of the largest.
Compare Yale.

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Oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S. and widely considered one of the most prestigious.

Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Mass., it was named Harvard College for a Puritan minister, John Harvard (1607–38), who bequeathed to the school his books and half of his estate. It became a university with the establishment of the medical school in 1782. Schools of divinity and law were established in the early 19th century. Charles Eliot, during his long tenure as president (1869–1909), made Harvard an institution with national influence. Harvard has educated seven U.S. presidents, many Supreme Court justices, cabinet officers, and congressional leaders, dozens of major literary and intellectual figures, and numerous Nobel laureates. Its undergraduate school, Harvard College, contains about one-third of the total student body. Radcliffe College (1879) was a coordinate undergraduate women's college. From 1960 women graduated from both Harvard and Radcliffe, and in 1999 Radcliffe was absorbed by Harvard, the name surviving in the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard University also has graduate or professional schools of business, education, government, dentistry, architecture and landscape design, and public health. Among its affiliated research institutes are the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and the Fogg Art Museum. Its Widener Library is one of the largest and most important libraries in the world.

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 oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (founded 1636) and one of the nation's most prestigious. It is one of the Ivy League schools. The main university campus lies along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few miles west of downtown Boston. Harvard's total enrollment is about 20,000.

      Harvard's history began when a college was established at New Towne, which was later renamed Cambridge for the English alma mater of some of the leading colonists. Classes began in the summer of 1638 with one master in a single frame house and a “college yard.” Harvard was named for a Puritan minister, John Harvard (Harvard, John), who left the college his books and half of his estate.

      At its inception Harvard was under church sponsorship, although it was not formally affiliated with any religious body. During its first two centuries the college was gradually liberated, first from clerical and later from political control, until in 1865 the university alumni began electing members of the governing board. During his long tenure as Harvard's president (1869–1909), Charles W. Eliot (Eliot, Charles William) made Harvard into an institution with national influence.

      The alumni and faculty of Harvard have been closely associated with many areas of American intellectual and political development. By the end of the 20th century, Harvard had educated six U.S. presidents—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy—and a number of justices, cabinet officers, and congressional leaders. Literary figures among Harvard graduates include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Henry James, Henry Adams, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, Walter Lippmann, and Norman Mailer. Other notable intellectual figures who graduated from or taught at Harvard include the historians Francis Parkman, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Samuel Eliot Morison (Morison, Samuel Eliot); the astronomer Benjamin Peirce (Peirce, Benjamin); the chemist Wolcott Gibbs; and the naturalist Louis Agassiz (Agassiz, Louis). William James (James, William) introduced the experimental study of psychology into the United States at Harvard in the 1870s.

      Harvard's undergraduate school, Harvard College, contains about one-third of the total student body. The core of the university's teaching staff consists of the faculty of arts and sciences, which includes the graduate faculty of arts and sciences. The university has graduate or professional schools of medicine, law, business, divinity, education, government, dental medicine, design, and public health. The schools of law, medicine, and business are particularly prestigious. Among the advanced research institutions affiliated with Harvard are the Museum of Comparative Zoology (founded in 1859 by Agassiz), the Gray Herbarium, the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the Arnold Arboretum (Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University), and the Fogg Art Museum. Also associated with the university are an astronomical observatory in Harvard, Massachusetts; the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C., a centre for Byzantine and pre-Columbian studies; and the Harvard-Yenching Institute in Cambridge for research on East and Southeast Asia. The Harvard University Library is one of the largest and most important university libraries in the world.

      Radcliffe College, one of the Seven Sisters schools, evolved from informal instruction offered to individual women or small groups of women by Harvard University faculty in the 1870s. In 1879 a faculty group called the Harvard Annex made a full course of study available to women, despite resistance to coeducation from the university's administration. Following unsuccessful efforts to have women admitted directly to degree programs at Harvard, the Annex, which had incorporated as the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, chartered Radcliffe College in 1894. The college was named for the colonial philanthropist Ann Radcliffe, who established the first scholarship fund at Harvard in 1643.

      Until the 1960s Radcliffe operated as a coordinate college, drawing most of its instructors and other resources from Harvard. Radcliffe graduates, however, were not granted Harvard degrees until 1963. Diplomas from that time on were signed by the presidents of both Harvard and Radcliffe. Women undergraduates enrolled at Radcliffe were technically also enrolled at Harvard College, and instruction was coeducational.

      Although its 1977 agreement with Harvard University called for the integration of select functions, Radcliffe College maintained a separate corporate identity for its property and endowments and continued to offer complementary educational and extracurricular programs for both undergraduate and graduate students, including career programs, a publishing course, and graduate-level workshops and seminars in women's studies.

      In 1999 Radcliffe and Harvard formally merged, and a new school, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, was established. The institute focuses on Radcliffe's former fields of study and programs and also offers such new ones as nondegree educational programs and the study of women, gender, and society.

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Universalium. 2010.

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