Stanford University, official name Leland Stanford Junior
University,
Stanford University private coeducational institution of
higher learning at Stanford, California, U.S. (adjacent to Palo Alto), one of
the most prestigious in the country. The university was founded in 1885 by
railroad magnate Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane (née Lathrop), and was
dedicated to their deceased only child, Leland, Jr.; it opened in 1891. The
university campus largely occupies Stanford’s former Palo Alto farm. The
buildings, conceived by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and designed
by architect Charles Allerton Coolidge, are of soft buff sandstone in a style
similar to the old California mission architecture, being long and low with
wide colonnades, open arches, and red-tiled roofs. The campus sustained heavy
damage from earthquakes in 1906 and 1989 but was rebuilt each time. The
university was coeducational from the outset, though between 1899 and 1933
enrollment of women students was limited to 500.
Stanford maintains overseas study centres in France, Italy,
Germany, England, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Japan, and Russia; about one-third
of its undergraduates study at one of these sites for one or two academic
quarters. A study and internship program is also offered in Washington, D.C.
The university offers a broad range of undergraduate, graduate, and
professional degree programs in schools of law, medicine, education,
engineering, business, earth sciences, and humanities and sciences. Total
enrollment exceeds 14,000.
Stanford is a national centre for research and is home to
more than 120 research institutes. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution
and Peace—founded in 1919 by Stanford alumnus (and future U.S. president)
Herbert Hoover to preserve documents related to World War I—contains more than
1.6 million volumes and 50 million documents dealing with 20th-century
international relations and public policy. The Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center (SLAC), established in 1962, is one of the world’s premier laboratories
for research in particle physics. Other noted research facilities include the
Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Institute for
International Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center.
The Stanford Medical Center, completed on the campus in
1959, is one of the top teaching hospitals in the country; it has more than 850
beds. Other notable campus locations are the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center
for Visual Arts (housing the university museum) and its adjacent sculpture
garden, containing works by Auguste Rodin, and Hanna House (1937), designed by
architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Adjacent to the campus is the Stanford Research
Park (1951), one of the world’s principal locations for the development of
electronics and computer technology. The Hopkins Marine Station is maintained
by the university at Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay, and a biological field
station is located near the campus at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.
Stanford’s distinguished faculty has included many Nobel
laureates, including Milton Friedman (economics), Arthur Kornberg
(biochemistry), and Burton Richter (physics). Among the university’s many
notable alumni are writers John Steinbeck and Ken Kesey, painter Robert
Motherwell, U.S. Supreme Court Justices William Hubbs Rehnquist and Sandra Day
O’Connor, astronaut Sally Ride, and golfer Tiger Woods.
STANFORD
FACTS AT A GLANCE
OPENED 1891
STUDENT ENROLLMENT
Undergraduates :
6,994
Graduates
: 9,128
CAMPUS :8,180 contiguous acres in six governmental jurisdictions
700 major
buildings
97% of
undergraduates live on campus
RESEARCH
5,300 externally sponsored projects
$1.33 billion total budget
FACULTY
2,118 faculty members
21 Nobel laureates are currently members of the Stanford
community
4:1 student to faculty ratio
Website
www.stanford.edu
