Harvard University

About Harvard University

Harvard University is a world-renowned private Ivy League research university founded in 1636 in Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. Established by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and named in honor of its initial benefactor, Puritan minister John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and among the most distinguished in the world. Harvard operates across three primary metropolitan campuses: the historic Cambridge campus (anchored by Harvard Yard, the iconic residential Houses along the Charles River, Widener Library, and Harvard Law School), the Allston campus across the Charles River (home to Harvard Business School, the state-of-the-art Science and Engineering Complex SEC, and Harvard Athletics), and the Longwood Medical Area in Boston (home to Harvard Medical School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health). With the world’s largest academic library system (over 20 million volumes) and the world’s largest university endowment (surpassing $50 billion), Harvard has educated 8 U.S. presidents, 161 Nobel laureates, 14 Turing Award winners, 48 Pulitzer Prize winners, 108 Olympic medalists, and 62 living billionaires.