Harvard University

Harvard University could be a non-public Ivy League analysis university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, established in 1636. Its history, influence and wealth have created it one in all the foremost prestigious universities within the world.

Established originally by the Massachusetts general assembly and shortly thenceforth named for altruist (its 1st benefactor), Harvard is that the United States' oldest establishment of upper learning, and also the Harvard Corporation (formally, the President and Fellows of Harvard College) is its 1st hired corporation. though ne'er formally attached with any denomination, the first school primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian priesthood. Its programme and student body were step by step secularised throughout the eighteenth century, and by the nineteenth century Harvard had emerged because the central cultural institution among Bean Town elites. Following the yank warfare, President Charles W. Eliot's long tenure (1869–1909) reworked the school and attached skilled colleges into a contemporary analysis university; Harvard was a introduction member of the Association of yankee Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant crystal rectifier the university through the good Depression and warfare II and started to reform the programme and liberalize admissions once the war. The college boy school became co-ed once its 1977 merger with Radcliffe school.

The University is organized into eleven separate tutorial units—ten colleges and also the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study—with fieldes throughout the Bean Town metropolitan area: its 209-acre (85 ha) main campus is targeted on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, roughly three miles (5 km) northwest of Boston; the grad school and athletics facilities, as well as Harvard construction, square measure placed across the Charles within the Allston neighborhood of Bean Town and also the medical, dental, and public healthschools square measure within the Longwood Medical space. Harvard has the biggest monetary endowment of any tutorial establishment within the world, standing at $36.4 billion.

Harvard could be a massive, extremely residential analysis university. The nominal price of attending is high, however the University's massive endowment permits it to supply generous aid packages. It operates many arts, cultural, and scientific museums, aboard the Harvard Library, that is that the world's largest tutorial and personal library system, comprising seventy nine individual libraries with over eighteen million volumes. Harvard's alumni embody eight U.S. presidents, many foreign heads of state, sixty two living billionaires, and 335Rhodes students. To date, some one hundred fifty philanthropist laureates and five Fields Medalists (when awarded) are attached as students, faculty, or staff.

History

Colonial

Engraving of Harvard school byPaul Revere, 1767

Harvard was fashioned in 1636 by vote of the good and General Court of the bay Colony. it had been at first known as "New College" or "the school at New Towne". In 1638, the school became home for North America's 1st known  press, carried by the ship John of London. In 1639, the school was renamed Harvard school once deceased reverend altruist, WHO was AN graduate of theUniversity of Cambridge. He had left the college £779 and his library of some four hundred books. The charter making the Harvard Corporationwas granted in 1650.

In the early years the school trained several Puritan ministers. the school offered a classic tutorial course supported a people university model—many leaders within the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but one in line with the prevailing Puritanphilosophy. the school was ne'er attached with any explicit denomination, however several of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational and Unitarian churches throughout geographic region. AN early folder, revealed in 1643, delineated  the introduction of the school as a response to the need "to advance learning and carry on it to posterity, dreading to depart AN illiterate ministry to the churches".

The leading Bean Town divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the primary president WHO wasn't additionally a priest, that marked a turning of the school toward intellectual independence from Puritanism.