Harvard University

Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. Harvard consistently ranks among the best universities in the world. The institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after its first principal donor, a young clergyman named John Harvard. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, John Harvard bequeathed about four hundred books in his will to form the basis of the college library collection, along with half his personal wealth worth several hundred pounds. The earliest known official reference to Harvard as a "university" rather than a "college" occurred in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780. In his 1869-1909 tenure as Harvard president, Charles William Eliot radically transformed Harvard into the pattern of the modern research university. Eliot's reforms included elective courses, small classes, and entrance examinations. The Harvard model influenced American education nationally, at both college and secondary levels. In 1999, Radcliffe College, initially founded as the "Harvard Annex" for women, merged formally with Harvard University, becoming the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Harvard has the world's fourth largest library collection (after the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the French Bibliothèque Nationale), and the largest financial endowment of any academic institution, standing at $29.2 billion as of 2006 (which is also the second largest endowment for a non-profit organization, behind only the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation).