Information Harvard University, what about of Harvard University

Information Harvard University

Harvard University is an American private Ivy League university research located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) constituted in the country. Harvard's history, influence and wealth have become one of the world's most prestigious universities.

Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained clergy and congregational unity. Curriculum and Harvard students became secular throughout the 18th century and the 19th century it had become the central cultural establishment among Boston elites. After the American Civil War, forty-year tenure of President Charles W. Eliot (1869-1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools to a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The college student became mixed after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gil pin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $ 32 billion as of September 2011.

The university comprises eleven separate academic units-ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study-with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area. 210 acres (85 ha) main campus of Harvard University is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3.4 miles (5.5 km) northwest of downtown Boston. The business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in Boston's Allston neighborhood schools and medical, dental and public health are in the Long wood Medical Area.

Eight U.S. presidents have been graduates, and 75 Nobel Laureates have been student, faculty, or staff members. Harvard is also the Alma mater of sixty-two living billionaires, the most in the country. The Library of Harvard University is the largest academic library in the United States, and one of the largest in the world.

The Harvard Crimson competes in 41 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Ivy League. Harvard has an intense athletic rivalry with Yale University traditionally culminating in The Game, although the Harvard-Yale Regatta before the football game. This rivalry, however, is put aside every two years when the Harvard and Yale track and field teams gather to compete against a combined Oxford University and the team of the University of Cambridge, a competition that international amateur competition is the world's oldest continuous.