Yale University (original) (raw)
For other uses of the name "Yale," see Yale (disambiguation).
Yale University, one of eight Ivy League universities, traces its beginnings to "An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School" passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut and dated October 9, 1701, which was furthered by a meeting in Branford, Connecticut by a group of ten Congregationalist ministers who pooled their books to form the school's first library. The school itself opened in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, but moved to New Haven, Connecticut in 1716, where it remains to this day. The Yale campus is in downtown New Haven, and the university is one of the city's largest employers, which sometimes leads to tension between students and local residents.
The college's original name was the Collegiate School; it was renamed Yale after an early benefactor, Elihu Yale. In the early 20th century, Yale merged with the Sheffield Scientific School.
Schools and libraries
In addition to a respected undergraduate college, Yale is noted for its law school, medical school, and school of music. The Divinity School was founded in the early 19th century by Congregationalists who felt that the Harvard University divinity school had become too liberal.
Yale's library system is among the largest in North America. The main library, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about 4 million volumes. The Beinecke Rare Book Library is housed in a marble building designed by Gordon Bunshaft, of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Its courtyard sculptures are by Isamu Noguchi.
Other resources include the Peabody Museum of Natural History and a museum of British art.
Yale's sports teams are called the Bulldogs. They participate in the NCAA's Division I (I-AA in football).
Heads of Collegiate School, Yale College, and Yale University
Rectors of Yale College (birth-death) (years as rector) 1 Rev. Abraham Pierson (1641-1707) (1701-1707) Collegiate School 2 Rev. Samuel Andrew ( - ) (1707-1719) (pro tempore) 3 Rev. Timothy Cutler ( - ) (1719-1726) 1718/9: renamed Yale College 4 Rev. Elisha William (1694-1755) (1726-1739) 5 Rev. Thomas Clap (1703-1767) (1740-1745)
Presidents of Yale College (birth-death) (years as president) 1 Rev. Thomas Clap (1703-1767) (1745-1766) 2 Rev. Naphtali Daggett (1727-1780) (1766-1777) (pro tempore) 3 Rev. Ezra Stiles (1727-1795) (1778-1795) 4 Timothy Dwight IV (1752-1817) (1795-1817) 5 Jeremiah Day (1773-1867) (1817-1846) 6 Theodore Dwight Woolsey (1801-1899) (1846-1871) 7 Noah Porter III (1811-1892) (1871-1886) 8 Timothy Dwight V (1828-1916) (1886-1899) 1887: renamed Yale University 9 Arthur Twining Hadley (1856-1930) (1899-1921) 10 James Rowland Angell (1869-1949) (1921-1937) 11 Charles Seymour (1885-1963) (1937-1951) 12 Alfred Whitney Griswold (1906-1963) (1951-1963) 13 Kingman Brewster, Jr (1919-1988) (1963-1977) 14 Hanna Holborn Gray (1930- ) (1977-1977) (acting) 15 A. Bartlett Giamatti (1938-1989) (1977-1986) 16 Benno C. Schmidt, Jr ( - ) (1986-1992) 17 Howard R. Lamar ( - ) (1992-1993) 18 Richard C. Levin ( - ) (1993- )
Residential colleges
Yale has a system of twelve residential colleges, instituted in 1930. The system is loosely modelled after the system found in British universities. However, students are accepted by the university as a whole, and assigned to residential colleges at random. These colleges are social rather than academic units, unlike the colleges at
- Pierson - named for Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson
- Davenport - named for Rev. John Davenport
- Jonathan Edwards - named for theologian Jonathan Edwards (usually called "J.E.")
- Branford - named for Branford, Connecticut
- Saybrook - named for Old Saybrook, Connecticut
- Trumbull - named for Jonathan Trumbull, governor of Connecticut
- Berkeley - named for Rev. George Berkeley (1685-1753)
- Calhoun - named for John C. Calhoun
- Silliman - named for Benjamin Silliman
- Timothy Dwight - named for the two Yale presidents of that name, Timothy Dwight IV and Timothy Dwight V (usually called "T.D.")
- Ezra Stiles - named for Rev. Ezra Stiles
- Morse - named for Samuel Morse
Benefactors
Yale has had many financial supporters, but some stand out by the magnitude of their contributions. Among those who have made large donations commemorated at the university are:
- Edward Harkness
- William Harkness
- Paul Mellon
- John William Sterling
Famous alumni
- George Akerlof, Nobel laureate (2001, Economics)
- John Ashcroft, former governor of Missouri
- Jennifer Beals, actress, best known for her work in the movie Flashdance
- Edmund Gerald "Jerry" Brown, Jr (LLB), former Governor of California
- William F. Buckley, political pundit
- George H. W. Bush, former President of the United States
- George W. Bush, President of the United States
- Dick Cavett, TV personality
- Bill Clinton (JD), former President of the United States
- Hillary Clinton (JD), United States Senator, wife of Bill Clinton
- James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans
- Howard Dean, Governor of Vermont
- Lee DeForest, inventor of the triode
- W. Edwards Deming (Ph.D.), "total quality management" (TQM) guru
- Alan Dershowitz, law professor at Harvard
- Jonathan Dickinson, founder of Princeton University
- David Duchovny, (M.A. English Literature) actor in the X-files
- John F. Enders, Nobel laureate (1954, Physiology or Medicine)
- Gerald Ford (Law), former President of the United States
- Jodie Foster, Academy Award winning actress and director
- Murray Gell-Mann, Nobel laureate (1969, Physics)
- David Gergen, political pundit
- J. Willard Gibbs, mathematician, physical chemist, thermodynamicist
- Sara Gilbert, actress, best known for her portrayal as the daughter Darlene Conner on the sit-com Roseanne
- Alfred G. Gilman, Nobel laureate (1994, Physiology or Medicine)
- Daniel Coit Gilman, first president of Johns Hopkins University
- Grace Hopper (Ph. D.), inventor of COBOL programming language
- Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development computer software company
- John Kerry, United States Senator
- Clarence King, founder of the US Geological Survey (USGS).
- Ernest Lawrence (Ph.D.), Nobel laureate (1939, Physics). Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are named after him.
- Joshua Lederberg (Ph.D.), Nobel laureate(1958, Physiology or Medicine)
- David Lee (Ph.D. 1959), Nobel laureate (1996, Physics)
- Sinclair Lewis, Nobel laureate (1930, Literature)
- Joe Lieberman, United States Senator
- Maya Lin, architect, best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- David McCullough, famous historian, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, best known for his books on American Presidents Truman and John Adams.
- Samuel Morse, telegraph pioneer, inventor of Morse code
- Robert Moses, middle 20th century New York City construction czar.
- Reinhold Niebuhr (divinity school)
- Edward Norton, actor
- Lars Onsager (Ph.D.), Nobel laureate (1968, Chemistry)
- John Ousterhout, creator of the Tcl programming language
- George Pataki, governor of New York
- Robert Picardo, the holographic doctor on the syndicated Star Trek:Voyager
- Gifford Pinchot, founder of the US Forest Service
- Cole Porter, composer
- Stone Phillips, television anchor for NBC
- David Hyde Pierce, actor, best known for the character Dr. Niles Crane on Frasier
- Vincent Price, movie actor
- Dickinson Richards, Nobel laureate (1956, physiology or medicine)
- Ronald Rivest, computer scientist, the "R" in the RSA cryptography algorithm, and co-recipient of the Turing Award in 2002.
- Gene Siskel, movie critic
- Benjamin Spock (medical school)
- Meryl Streep (MFA), Academy Award winning actress
- Richard Thalheimer, founder of The Sharper Image
- William Howard Taft, President of the United States
- Garry Trudeau, Doonesbury cartoonist
- John Turturro (MFA), actor
- William Vickrey, Nobel laureate (1996, Economics)
- Margaret Warner, Senior Correspondent (co-anchor) on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, a nationally televised news program broadcast every weekday on PBS.
- Sigourney Weaver (MFA), actress
- Noah Webster, author of the dictionary of the English language
- George Whipple, Nobel laureate (1934, Physiology or Medicine)
- Andrew Dickson White, first president of Cornell University
- Eric Wieschaus (Ph.D.), Nobel laureate (1995 , Physiology or Medicine)
- Thornton Wilder, playwright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the play Our Town
- Pete Wilson, former governor of California
- Henry Winkler (MFA), actor, best known for the character Fonzie on Happy Days
- Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin
- Naomi Wolf, feminist writer
- Tom Wolfe (PhD), journalist, author of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities
- Robert Woodward, journalist and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book All the President's Men
Fictional alumni
- Charles Montgomery Burns, Class of 1914, the owner of the Springfield Nuclear Powerplant in the hit cartoon television series The Simpsons
- Dink Stover, hero of Owen Johnson's 1911 Stover at Yale
Bombs
Yale's campus has been bombed three times. On
May 1, 1970, an explosive device was detonated in the Ingalls Rink during events related to the trial of Black Panther Bobby Seale. On June 24, 1993, computer science professor David Gelernter was injured in his office on Hillhouse Avenue by a bomb sent by the Unabomber. On May 21, 2003, an explosive device went off at Yale University's Sterling Law School, damaging two classrooms.