Stanford University

Stanford University (officially Leland Stanford Junior University) is a private research university in Stanford, California. It was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford—a railroad magnate who served as the eighth governor of and then-incumbent senator from California—and his wife, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Jr. Stanford has an campus, among the largest in the nation.

The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland's death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Frederick Terman, the university's provost, inspired and supported faculty and graduates entrepreneurialism to build a self-sufficient local industry, which would later be known as Silicon Valley. Stanford University and the city of Palo Alto jointly established Stanford Research Park in 1951 as the world's first university research park that eventually became an economic engine and "the epicenter of Silicon Valley".

The university is organized around seven schools on the same campus. It also houses the Hoover Institution, a public policy think-tank. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two private institutions in the Pac-12 Conference. Stanford has won 131 NCAA team championships, more than any other university, and was awarded the NACDA Directors' Cup for 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994. Stanford students and alumni have won at least 296 Olympic medals (including 150 gold).

Stanford is particularly noted for its entrepreneurship and is one of the most successful universities in attracting funding for start-ups. Stanford alumni have founded numerous companies, which combined produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. 58 Nobel laureates, 29 Turing Award laureates, # Allen Newell: BS Physics Stanford 1949; PhD Carnegie Institute of Technology 1957. Graduate school alumni who received the Turing Award: # Martin Hellman: BE New York University 1966, MS Stanford University 1967, Ph.D. Stanford University 1969, all in electrical engineering. Professor at Stanford 1971–1996. # John Hopcroft: BS Seattle University; MS EE Stanford 1962, Phd EE Stanford 1964. # Barbara Liskov: BSc Berkeley 1961; PhD Stanford. # Raj Reddy: BS from Guindy College of Engineering (Madras, India) 1958; M Tech, University of New South Wales 1960; Ph.D. Stanford 1966. # Ronald Rivest: BA Yale 1969; PhD Stanford 1974. # Robert Tarjan: BS Caltech 1969; MS Stanford 1971, PhD 1972.

Non-alumni former and current faculty, staff, and researchers who received the Turing Award: # Whitfield Diffie: BS Mathematics Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1965. Visiting scholar at Stanford from 2009–2010 and an affiliate from 2010–2012; currently, a consulting professor at CISAC (The Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University). # Doug Engelbart: BS EE Oregon State University 1948; MS EE Berkeley 1953; PhD Berkeley 1955. Researcher/Director at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) 1957–1977; Director (Bootstrap Project) at Stanford University 1989–1990. # Edward Feigenbaum: BS Carnegie Institute of Technology 1956, Ph.D. Carnegie Institute of Technology 1960. Associate Professor at Stanford 1965–1968; Professor at Stanford 1969–2000; Professor Emeritus at Stanford (2000–present). # Robert W. Floyd: BA 1953, BSc Physics, both from the University of Chicago. Professor at Stanford (1968–1994). # Sir Antony Hoare: Undergraduate at Oxford University. Visiting Professor at Stanford 1973. # Alan Kay: BA/BS from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Ph.D. 1969 from the University of Utah. Researcher at Stanford 1969–1971. # John McCarthy: BS Math, Caltech; PhD Princeton. Assistant Professor at Stanford 1953–1955; Professor at Stanford 1962–2011. # Robin Milner: BSc 1956 from Cambridge University. Researcher at Stanford University 1971–1972. # Amir Pnueli: BSc Math from Technion 1962, PhD Weizmann Institute of Science 1967. Instructor at Stanford 1967; Visitor at Stanford 1970 # Dana Scott: BA Berkeley 1954, Ph.D. Princeton 1958. Associate Professor at Stanford 1963–1967. # Niklaus Wirth: BS Swiss Federal Institute of Technology 1959, MSC Universite Laval, Canada, 1960; Ph.D. Berkeley 1963. Assistant Professor at Stanford University 1963–1967. # Andrew Yao: BS physics National University of Taiwan 1967; AM Physics Harvard 1969; Ph.D. Physics, Harvard 1972; Ph.D. CS University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign 1975 Assistant Professor at Stanford University 1976–1981; Professor at Stanford University 1982–1986.|name="noteStudAward"}} and 8 Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as alumni, faculty, or staff.

Stanford is the alma mater of several world leaders, including the 31st President of the United States, Herbert Hoover, the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, and the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The university is also associated with 74 living billionaires, and 17 astronauts. Stanford is one of the leading producers of Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Gates Cambridge Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, and members of the United States Congress. Provided by Wikipedia