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Coordinates: 37°25′46″N 122°10′11″W 37.4293932, -122.1696103

Stanford University

• Location & Contact Information
  • Address: 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305
  • Telephone Number: (650) 725-6427
  • Official Website: [1]

History & Memorable Moments

• In 1876, former California Governor Leland Stanford purchased 650 acres of Rancho San Francisquito for a country home and started the development of his famous Palo Alto Stock Farm. He afterwards bought adjoining properties totaling more than 8,000 acres.

• The small town that was beginning to emerge near the land took the name Palo Alto (tall tree) following a giant California redwood on the bank of San Francisquito Creek. The tree itself is still there and could later become the university's emblem and symbol of its official seal.

• Leland Stanford, who grew up and studied law in New York, moved West after the gold rush and, like many of his wealthy contemporaries, made his fortune in the railroads. He was a leader of the Republican Party, governor of California and after a U.S. senator. He and Jane had one son, who died of typhoid fever in 1884 when the family was traveling in Italy. Leland Jr. was just 15. Within weeks of his death, the Stanfords determined that, since they no more could do anything for their own child, "the children of California shall be our children." They quickly set about to obtain a lasting way to memorialize their beloved son.

• (Notice note regarding accounts of this Stanfords visit with Harvard President Charles W. Eliot.) Ultimately, they decided to establish two institutions in Leland Junior's name - the University and a museum. From the outset they created some untraditional choices: the university could be coeducational, in a time when most were all-male; non-denominational, when most were correlated with a spiritual association; and avowedly practical, producing "cultured and helpful citizens."

• On October 1, 1891, Stanford University opened its doors after six years of planning and building. The prediction of a New York newspaper that Stanford academics would "lecture in marble halls to empty benches" was quickly disproved. The first student body consisted of 555 men and girls, and the first faculty of 15 was enlarged to 49 for the second year.

• The Stanfords engaged Frederick Law Olmsted, the famous landscape architect who created New York's Central Park, to design the physical program for the university. The collaboration was contentious, but finally caused an organization of quadrangles on an east-west axis. Today, as Stanford continues to expand, the university's architects try to respect those initial university plans.

• After Leland Stanford's death in 1893, the university entered a period of financial and lawful uncertainties caused by federal challenges to his estate. During that time, Jane Stanford took over the responsibility of making sure that the new university could prosper.

• The estate was released from probate in 1898 and the subsequent calendar year, after selling her railway holdings, Jane Stanford turned over $11 million to the university trustees. Exactly what President Jordan termed "six quite long years" had come to a close. Throughout that moment, he said, "the near future of a university hung with one thread, the love of a fantastic woman."

• Jane died in 1905, after having relinquished to the university trustees control over the university's affairs and having supervised construction of the buildings she and her husband had guessed, including the magnificent Memorial Church.

• Early on the morning of April 18, 1906, a violent earthquake wrecked many of the newest buildings and killed two people on campus. A few of the structures were never rebuilt; others, like the church, rose again. (More about Stanford and the 1906 Earthquake.)

• In the next years, Stanford opened professional schools of medicine, business, engineering, law and education. The university lost more than 70 men and women in World War I. In its aftermath, Herbert Hoover, a graduate of Stanford's pioneer class who was working in war relief, donated materials and money to establish a set of documents on peace and war. That collection would finally become the Hoover Institution. In 1928, Hoover was elected president of america.

• In 1934, alumni volunteers formed "Stanford Associates" to raise money for the university and ensure the development of its programs and facilities. After that, Stanford alumni would play an integral role in keeping the university's expansion and improvement.

• In 1939, with the encouragement of their professor and mentor, Frederick Terman, Stanford alumni David Packard and William Hewlett established a small electronics company in a Palo Alto garage.

• Over the subsequent years, Stanford would function as a wellspring of invention, producing advances in research as well as the formation of several businesses which have made Silicon Valley one of the most advanced and productive high-tech regions on the planet.

• In 1947, professor William W. Hansen unveiled an electron linear accelerator prototype, and the next year construction began on a new Microwave Laboratory. In 1951 Varian Associates built a research and development lab on the edge of campus that would eventually become the famous Stanford Industrial Park, now called Stanford Research Park. In 1952, Stanford won its first Nobel Prize, which went to physics Professor Felix Bloch; three years after his colleague Willis Lamb, Jr. also won a Nobel.

• Under the leadership of Terman, a professor of electrical engineering who served as provost from 1955 to 1965, the university embarked upon a campaign to construct "steeples of excellence," clusters of outstanding science and engineering researchers who would attract the best students. His role in fostering close ties between Stanford students and the emerging tech businesses has led some to consider him the father of Silicon Valley. He created an entrepreneurial spirit that today extends to every academic field at Stanford.

• Two of the university's most iconic scientific institutions were constructed in the 1960s: the 2-mile-long linear accelerator (SLAC National Laboratory); and "that the Dish," a 150-foot diameter radio antenna in the foothills built as a joint venture between the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) as well as the Air Force. Also in the 1960s, Professor John Chowning developed FM sound synthesis to digitally generate sounds, leading to the invention of the audio synthesizer.

• At the first 1970s, professor Vinton Cerf, called the "dad of the world wide web," developed using a colleague that the TCP/IP protocols which would become the standard for Internet communication involving computers. In the 1980s, John Cioffi and his students realized that traditional phone lines could be used for high-speed data transmission, causing the evolution of digital subscriber lines (DSL). In 1991, SLAC physicist Paul Kunz set up the first web server in the U.S. after seeing Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, in Geneva, Switzerland.

• The Internet, of course, is central to the story of Silicon Valley. Google, the web's most popular search engine and one of the world's most influential companies, got its start at Stanford when Sergey Brin and Larry Page developed their page ranking algorithm as grad students in the 1990s. Other legendary Silicon Valley businesses with strong ties to Stanford comprise Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard Company, Intuit, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Microsystems.

• The post-war years were a time of tremendous rise and change as Stanford enlarged its national reputation as a leading university. A record 8,223 students revealed up for class in Autumn 1947, including many former soldiers taking advantage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.

• As all great universities, Stanford both represented and acted upon the larger world. Stanford students and faculty were actively involved in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s. The university became dwelling in 1965 to the earliest known student group advocating civil rights for gays and lesbians.

• Stanford also shared with different universities the political tensions and activities that came about as the consequence of the Vietnam War. The very first antiwar rally took place in February 1965. The years 1968-1971 were indicated with turmoil, including strikes and sit-ins; pupils and faculty proved particularly concerned about ROTC coaching, CIA recruitment and Stanford's role as a defense researcher.

• In the aftermath of Martin Luther King's assassination, students successfully demanded that additional non-white students be recruited and admitted. The Program in African American and African American Institute, established in 1969, was the first ethnic studies curriculum at Stanford, and also the first such program at a private association at the U.S. Stanford also undertook an attempt to draw Native Americans into the campus, that coincided with the discontinuation of their "Indian" since Stanford's mascot. As at other colleges, the movement to end apartheid in South Africa mobilized students over a period of a decade or more. The university would divest lots of its holdings in companies that did business in South Africa. In 1985, in a striking honor, Stanford was chosen to house the papers of Martin Luther King, Jr..

• Girls had formed part of Stanford's student body from the very start, but neither they nor the female faculty had achieved anything close to parity during the university's first decades. In reality, Jane Stanford had agreed that no more than 500 female students ever be enrolled at one time. That was changed in the 1930s, when the Board of Trustees determined that the number could raise but that the proportion of men to women must remain constant. All limitations were removed in 1973. Feminist Research has been created as an interdisciplinary major in 1981, along with also the Center for Research on Women, today the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, opened in 1986.

• As at other colleges, traditional Western Civilization conditions came under fire from the 1980s from the so-called "culture wars." At Stanford, the course was replaced in 1988 by a Cultures, Ideas and Values requirement, that put off a nationwide discussion about the humanities canon. The discussion eventually resulted in the institution of Intro to the Humanities, a yearlong interdisciplinary course for freshmen that was provided till 2012. Other measures taken to make sure that Stanford undergraduates would have an educational experience akin to that of much smaller liberal arts schools contained the establishment of Introductory Seminars, Sophomore College and a Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education.

• The 21st century has put growing demands on research institutions like Stanford, which was based on the concept that research and teaching could--and must--profit society.

• Stanford has recognized the challenges of an increasingly intricate and interconnected world accessible opportunities to do things otherwise. Together with its breadth and depth of scholarship, entrepreneurial heritage and pioneering faculty, the faculty has dedicated to a research and teaching renaissance by adopting interdisciplinary procedures.

• Those efforts were aided by The Stanford Challenge, that, when finished in 2012, raised $6.2 billion. The campaign's premise was that many of society's most formidable problems don't present themselves in conventional academic categories. Instead, issues like climate change, renewable energy, state and international security require the collective experience of several scholars.

• Support from generous alumni and friends assisted the university achieve its interdisciplinary aspirations through an abundance of new and renamed centres, including the Hasso Plattner Institute of both Design along with also the Freeman Spogli Institute to get International Studies at 2005; the Stanford Woods Institute for its surroundings and also the Clayman Institute for endothelial Research at 2006; the Precourt Institute to get Energy and also the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at 2009; as well as the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at 2010.

• Several of Stanford's teaching and research facilities have been transformed to emphasize interconnectedness and sustainability. As an example, the four-building Science and Engineering Quad places fundamental scientists side by side with medical researchers and engineers. New homes for your business and law schools encourage support and cooperation revised curricula.

• A brand new Arts District and Arts Institute also emerged, representing an increasing appreciation for the importance of artistic and creative experiences to your liberal arts instruction.

• The world's biggest research building committed to stem cell research--the Lorry I. Lokey Stem Cell Research Building-- opened in 2010, adjacent to the medical faculty. Ground was broken for an extension to the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at 2012 and for a new Stanford Hospital at 2013.

• To deal with the urgent, worldwide challenge of climate change, Stanford applied its research expertise to campus operations. The university became one of their very energy-efficient research universities on earth using the Stanford Energy System Innovations (SESI). The most significant construction job in Stanford's history, SESI leverages a selection of energy options to decrease the university carbon dioxide by 68 percent and reduce water consumption by 18 percent. SESI caps a series of sustainability campaigns that have included a transportation management program to reduce drive-alone rates among commuters, campus-wide energy retrofits and production of a habitat conservation area to preserve species that is endangered.

• Under the leadership of Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Harry Elam, Stanford instituted new conditions to improve undergraduate education. The "Ways of Thinking, Ways of Doing" condition, accepted in 2012, focuses on content as well as capacities. Students take 11 lessons in eight topic areas, ranging from aesthetic and interpretive inquiry to implemented quantitative reasoning.

• To leverage new approaches to schooling, the university also established the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning--later renamed the Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning.

• As concern concerning the price of higher schooling attained brand new heights, Stanford expanded its generous monetary aid program. At 2008, Stanford declared a brand new plans under which parents who have salary less than $125,000 no longer pay tuition. Teens who have incomes less than $65,000 aren't expected to pay tuition or contribute to the costs of room, board and other costs.

• The 21st century has also attracted people from varied backgrounds together in new ways, and Stanford has strengthened its recruitment and support of diverse faculty, graduate student and undergraduate student communities. Today, about half of Stanford's undergraduate students are members of minority groups. Eight percent are from different nations. Programs such as DARE--Diversifying Academia, Recruiting Excellence--motivate minority graduate students to pursue higher education for a career.

• Stanford research programs continue to evolve as a result of the expertise, originality and initiative of the faculty that put the research schedule. A new Stanford Neurosciences Institute, including experts in neuroscience, medicine, education, law and business, is concentrating on understanding how the brain gives rise to mental life and behaviour.

• The function builds on enhancements made in Stanford's biomedical research since the early 2000s, as a result of the construction of the James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences in 2003. The Clark Center is home to Bio-X, that created Stanford's version for bringing scholars from various disciplines with each other to investigate research. Bio-X researchers symbolize the biosciences, physical sciences, engineering and medicine.

• Another promising area of future research is that the chemistry-human biology interface. Stanford ChEM-H continues to be established to bring together chemists, engineers, biologists and also clinicians to examine life at a chemical level and apply which knowledge to enhancing human health.

• Also vital in the brand new century is the Stanford Cyber Initiative, which handles the complex opportunities and challenges raised by cyber technologies.

• The 21st century also participates in a brand new relationship between Stanford and also the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). In 2010, reps from Stanford and DOE signed an agreement that would enable the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to continue to function on university-owned lands for decades to come. The new lease was signed in a moment when SLAC's research curriculum has been accentuated by the construction of the Linac Coherent Light Source. It produces ultrafast pulses of X-rays millions of occasions more intelligent than the most powerful synchrotron resources to allow scientists to better comprehend molecules and atoms in motion.

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