Stanford University

Stanford University, legally known as Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California  which is  one of the world's most prestigious academic institutions, with the top position in various rankings and measures in the United States. Stanford was established in 1885 by Leland Stanford, U.S Senator and  former Governor   hailed from California and also the leading railroad tycoon, and Jane Lathrop Stanford, his wife, in memory of their only child,  Leland Stanford, Jr., , who died of typhoid fever at age 15 the preceding year. Stanford admitted its first students on 1891October 1, as a coeducational and non-denominational organisation. Education was free until 1920. The university struggled financially after Leland Stanford's death in 1893. It was also suffered after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. After World War II, Provost Frederick Terman sustained faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build autonomous local industry which was later called Silicon Valley. Stanford was residence to a linear accelerator, and was one of the original four ARPANET nodes (precursor to the Internet) by 1970. 

The main college is in northern Santa Clara Valley adjoining to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Stanford also has land and facilities in another place. Its 8,180-acre (3,310 ha) college is one of the biggest in the United States.  The university is also one of the top fundraising organisation in the country, becoming the first school to heave more than a billion dollars in a year. Stanford's educational strength is widen with 40 departments in the three educational schools that have undergraduate students and another four proficient schools. Students participate in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Division I FBS Pacific-12 Conference. It has earned 108 NCAA team championships, the second-most for a university, 476 individual championships, the most in Division I, and has won the NACDA Directors' Cup, recognizing the university with the best overall athletic team accomplishment, every year since 1994-1995. Stanford faculty and alumni have developed many companies including Google, Nike, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo and Instagram and companies developed by Stanford alumni produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, equal to the 10th-largest economy in the world. It is the creator of 30 living billionaires, 18 Turing Award Laureates, and 17 astronauts. It is also one of the top producers of members of the United States Congress. The University has associated with 59 Nobel Laureates and 2 Fields Medalists (When awarded).

History

The university legally opened on 1891 October 1, with 555 students. On the university's inauguration day, Founding President David Starr Jordan (1851–1931) stated to Stanford's first Class: "Stanford is make sacred by no traditions; it is obstructed by none. Its points out forward." Stanford was launched by Leland Stanford, a railroad tycoon, former California governor, and U.S senator, together with his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford. It is named in tribute of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died in 1884 from typhoid fever just before his 16th birthday. His parents decided to devote a university to their only son, and Leland Stanford told his wife, "The children of California shall be our children." The Stanfords went to visit Harvard's president, Charles Eliot, and asked him favor to develop either university or technical school or museum. Eliot advice that he should found a university and a donation of $5 million would suffice in the days of 1884. Frederick Law Olmsted designed the campus master plan (1886-1914) and later by his sons. The Main courtyard was deliberate by Charles Allerton Coolidge and his colleagues, and by Leland Stanford himself.  The cornerstone was laid on May 14, 1887, which would have been Leland Stanford Junior's nineteenth birthday.

Since 2000, Stanford has extended dramatically. In February 2012, Stanford declared the end of the Stanford Challenge. In a period of five years, Stanford raised $6.2 billion, above its initial goal by $2 billion, making it the most triumphant university fundraising campaign in history. The funds will go towards 103 new gifted faculty appointments, 360 graduate student research associations, scholarships and financial aid, and the construction or restoration of 38 campus buildings. The new funding also enabled the construction of the world's largest facility devoted entirely to stem cell research; an completely new campus for the business school; a dramatic extension of the law school; a new Engineering Quad; a new art and art history building; an on-campus concert hall; a new art museum; and a designed extension of the medical school, among other. In 2012, Stanford opened the Stanford Center at Peking University, an almost 400,000-square-foot (37,000 m²), three-story research center in the Peking University campus. The ceremony featured annotations by U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke and Stanford President John Hennessy. Stanford became the first American university to have its own building on a major Chinese university campus. Other Stanford programs undergo notable extension as well, such as the Stanford in Washington Program's creation of the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery in Woodley Park, Washington, D.C., and the Stanford in Florence program's move to Palazzo Capponi, a 15th-century Renaissance palace. The university finished the James H. Clark Center for interdisciplinary research in engineering and medicine in 2003, named for sponsor, co-founder of Netscape, Silicon Graphics and WebMD, and former professor of electrical engineering James H. Clark.In 2011, Stanford produced the first PhD program in stem cell science in the United States. The program is based at Stanford Medical School. Undergraduate admission has also became more selective; the reception rate dropped from 13% for the class of 2004 to 5.04% for the class of 2019, the lowest admit rate in University history.  Stanford's status, aggressive admissions, and tough legacy of entrepreneurship have contributed to the East-West competition between Stanford and such institutions as Harvard University, Princeton University and Yale University.