Everyone probably knows that Harvard has been the world’s top-rated university for a few years now. But behind this common knowledge is an array of not so well known facts about the world’s first university of choice.
The Herald Nigeria brings you ten of these facts:
- Established in 1636, Harvard is the United States’ oldest institution of higher learning.
- Harvard University’s main campus is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Cambridge is the name of one of the UK’s top universities, Cambridge University, located in Cambridge, England.
- Harvard University is named for John Harvard, its first benefactor. Mr Harvard was an alumnus of the University of Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his scholar’s library of some 400 volumes.
- Harvard University has produced 8 US Presidents, more than any university or college. These include: for first degree – John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (transferred from Princeton); law school -Rutherford B. Hayes and Barack Obama; business school – George W. Bush (MBA).
- Harvard University’s alumni include 62 living billionaires; including Airbnb cofounder Nathan Blecharczyk and former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped out.
- Harvard University has produced 130 Nobel Laureates, the most by any university in the world. The list includes former US Presidents Barack Obama and Theodore Roosevelt who both won the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Harvard University admitted only men until it merged, in 1977, with Radcliffe College and became coeducational.
- Harvard University has a financial endowment of $34.5 billion as at 2015, the largest of any academic institution in the world. Along with Harvard’s pension assets, working capital, and non-cash gifts, it is managed by Harvard Management Company, Inc. (HMC), a Harvard-owned investment management company.
- Harvard Library is the world’s largest academic and private library system, comprising 79 individual libraries with over 18 million volumes.
- Harvard University is one of the 8 Ivy League schools in the United States. Others are Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.