Stanford University

Stanford was supported in 1885 by man of affairs, former Governor of and U.S. legislator from American state and leading railroad magnate, and his married woman, Jane Lathrop Stanford, in memory of their solely kid, man of affairs, Jr., United Nations agency had died of infectious disease at age fifteen the previous year. Stanford was opened on Gregorian calendar month one, 1891 as a integrated and non-denominational establishment. Tuition was free till 1920.The university struggled financially when man of affairs's 1893 death and once more when abundant of the field was broken by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.Following war II, academic administrator Frederick Terman supported school and graduates' entrepreneurialism to create independent native business in what would later be referred to as geographical region. By 1970, Stanford was home to a accelerator, and was one among the first four ARPANET nodes (precursor to the Internet).

The main field is found in northern Santa Clara depression adjacent to town and between San Jose and San Francisco. alternative holdings, like laboratories, and nature reserves, ar placed outside the most field. Its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) field is one among the biggest within the us. The university is additionally one among the highest fundraising establishments within the country, turning into the primary faculty to lift over a billion greenbacks in an exceedingly year.

Stanford's educational strength is broad with forty departments within the 3 educational faculties that have collegian students and another four skilled faculties. Students contend in thirty six varsity sports, and therefore the university is one among 2 non-public establishments within the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. it's gained 107 NCAA team championships, the second-most for a university, 476 individual championships, the foremost in Division I, and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the most effective overall athletic team action, each year since 1994-1995.

Stanford school and alumni have supported several corporations as well as Google, Hewlett-Packard, Nike, Sun small systems, Instagram and Yahoo!, and firms supported by Stanford alumni generate over $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, resembling the 10th-largest economy within the world. it's the school of thirty living billionaires, seventeen astronauts, and eighteen Turing Award laureates. it's additionally one among the leading producers of members of the us Congress. The University has related  with fifty nine Nobel laureates and a pair of Fields Medalists (when awarded).

Stanford was supported by man of affairs, a railroad tycoon, U.S. senator, and former American state governor, in conjunction with his married woman, Jane Lathrop Stanford. it's named in honor of their solely kid, Leland Stanford, Jr., United Nations agency died in 1884 from infectious disease simply before his sixteenth birthday. His oldsters determined to dedicate a university to their solely son, and man of affairs told his married woman, "The kids of American state shall be our kids." The Stanford visited Harvard's president, Charles Eliot, and asked whether or not he ought to establish a university, school or depository. Eliot replied that he ought to found a university associated an endowment of $5 million would answer (in 1884 dollars; regarding $131 million today).

Leland Stanford, the university's founder, as painted by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier in 1881 and currently on show at the Cantor Center

The university's start Grant of Endowment from the Stanfords was issued in Gregorian calendar month 1885. Besides shaping the operational structure of the university, it created many specific stipulations:

"The Trustees ... shall have the facility and it shall be their duty:

To establish and maintain at such University an academic system, which will, if followed, work the graduate for a few helpful pursuit, and to the present finish to cause the pupils, as simply as could also be, to declare the particular calling, which, in life, they may desire to pursue; ...

To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.

To have taught in the University the right and advantages of association and co-operation.

To afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes.

To maintain on the Palo Alto estate a farm for instruction in agriculture in all its branches."

Though the trustees are in overall charge of the university, Leland and Jane Stanford as Founders retained great control until their deaths.

Despite the duty to have a co-educational institution in 1899 Jane Stanford, the remaining Founder, added to the Founding Grant the legal requirement that "the number of women attending the University as students shall at no time ever exceed five hundred". She feared the large numbers of women entering would lead the school to become "the Vassar of the West" and felt that would not be an appropriate memorial for her son. In 1933 the requirement was reinterpreted by the trustees to specify an undergraduate male:female ratio of 3:1. The "Stanford ratio" of 3:1 remained in place until the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates, but much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. In 1973 the University trustees successfully petitioned the courts to have the restriction formally removed. As of 2014 the undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes (47.2% women, 52.8% men), though males outnumber females (38.2% women, 61.8% men) at the graduate level. In the same petition they also removed the prohibition of sectarian worship on campus (previous only non-denominational Christian worship in Stanford Memorial Church was permitted).