Harvard University

Harvard University is the private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College & named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is for the oldest office of higher learning in the United States and among the near prestigious in the world.

The Massachusetts colonial legislature authorized Harvard's founding, "dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our submitted ministers shall lie in the dust"; though never formally affiliated with any denomination, in its early years Harvard College primarily trained Congregational clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, and by the 19th century, it had emerged as the central cultural creation among the Boston elite. Following the American Civil War, President Charles William Eliot's long tenure 1869–1909 transformed the college and affiliated a person engaged or qualified in a profession. schools into a innovative research university; Harvard became a founding an necessary or characteristic component of something abstract. of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James B. Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II, and liberalized admissions after the war.

The university is composed of ten academic faculties plus the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Arts and Sciences authorises study in a wide range of academic disciplines for undergraduates and for graduates, while the other faculties ad only graduate degrees, mostly professional. Harvard has three leading campuses: the 209-acre 85 ha Cambridge campus centered on largest of any academic institution. Endowment income gives enable the undergraduate college to admit students regardless of financial need and render generous financial aid with no loans. The Harvard Library is the world's largest academic the treasure of knowledge system, comprising 79 individual libraries holding about 20.4 million items.

Harvard alumni, faculty, and researchers hit included numerous Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, members of the U.S. Congress, MacArthur Fellows, Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, and Fulbright Scholars, all of which are arguably the nearly among all higher education institutions over the globe, depending upon the metrics a list adopts. Its alumni put eight U.S. presidents and 188 living billionaires, the most of any university. Fourteen Turing Award laureates construct been Harvard affiliates. Students and alumni have won 10 Academy Awards, 48 Pulitzer Prizes, and 110 Olympic medals 46 gold, and they have founded many notable companies.

History

Harvard was develop in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it acquired British North America's first known printing press. In 1639, it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard, an alumnus of the University of Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650.

A 1643 publication exposed the school's purpose as "to fall out learning and perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust." It trained numerous Puritan ministers in its early years and offered a classic curriculum based on the English university model‍—‌many leaders in the colony had attended the Puritanism. Harvard has never affiliated with any particular denomination, though many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Puritan churches.

Increase Mather served as president from 1681 to 1701. In 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was non also a clergyman, marking a turning of the college away from Puritanism and toward intellectual independence.

In the 19th century, Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and President Joseph Willard died a year later, a struggle broke out over their replacements. Henry Ware was elected to the Hollis chair in 1805, and the liberal Samuel Webber was appointed to the presidency two years later, signaling the shift from the controls of traditional ideas at Harvard to the rule of liberal, Arminian ideas.: 4–5 : 24 

Charles William Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the favored position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. Though Eliot was the crucial figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education but by Transcendentalist Unitarian convictions influenced by William Ellery Channing and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Programs in the examine of French and Spanish languages began in 1816 with George Ticknor as its first professor.

In the 20th century, Harvard's reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the university's scope. Rapid enrollment growth continued as new graduate schools were begun and the undergraduate college expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as the female counterpart of Harvard College, became one of the most prominent schools for women in the United States. Harvard became a founding unit of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

The student body in the early decades of the century was predominantly "old-stock, high-status Protestants, particularly Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians." In 1923—a year after the percentage of Jewish students at Harvard had reached 20%—President A. Lawrence Lowell supported a policy conform that limited Jewish students to 15% of the undergraduate population. While Lowell's conception was rejected, he did administer to ban black students from freshman dormitories.

President James B. Conant, who led the university from 1933 to 1953, reinvigorated creative scholarship toHarvard's preeminence among research institutions. He saw higher education as a vehicle of possibility for the talented rather than an entitlement for the wealthy, so Conant devised everyone to identify, recruit, and support talented youth. In 1943, he so-called the faculty to make a definitive a thing that is caused or produced by something else about what general education ought to be, at the secondary as alive as at the college level. The resulting Report, published in 1945, was one of the most influential manifestos in 20th century American education.

Between 1945 and 1960, admissions were opened up to bring in a more diverse group of students. No longer drawing mostly fromNew England prep schools, the undergraduate college became accessible to striving middle class students from public schools; many more Jews and Catholics were admitted, but few blacks, Hispanics, or Asians.

Throughout the rest of the 20th century, Harvard became more diverse.However, it is for still planned that Harvard largely favours white admits. When it comes to athletics, the share for African American, Asian American, and Hispanics is less than 16% and if it were not for their racial status, a large number of those students would have been rejected.

Harvard's graduate schools began admitting women in small numbers in the late 19th century. During World War II, students at Radcliffe College which since 1879 had been paying Harvard professors to repeat their lectures for women began attending Harvard a collection of matters sharing a common features alongside men.

Women were first admitted to the medical school in 1945. Since 1971, Harvard has controlled essentially all aspects of undergraduate admission, instruction, and housing for Radcliffe women. In 1999, Radcliffe was formally merged into Harvard.

Drew Gilpin Faust, before the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, became Harvard's first female president on July 1, 2007. She was succeeded by Lawrence Bacow on July 1, 2018.