Stanford University

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Leland Stanford Junior University,[9][10] commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and then-incumbent United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Jr.[11]

The university admitted its first students in 1891,[11][12] opening as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.[13] Following World War II, university provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley).[14] In 1951, Stanford Research Park was established in Palo Alto as the world's first university research park.[15] By 2021, the university had 2,288 tenure-line faculty, senior fellows, center fellows, and medical faculty on staff.[16]

The university is organized around seven schools of study on an 8,180-acre (3,310-hectare) campus, one of the largest in the nation.[4] It houses the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank, and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".[17] Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of eight private institutions in the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC). Stanford has won 136 NCAA team championships,[18] and was awarded the NACDA Directors' Cup for 25 consecutive years, beginning in 1994.[19] Students and alumni have won 302 Olympic medals (including 153 gold).[20]

The university is associated with 94 billionaires,[21] 58 Nobel laureates,[16] 33 MacArthur Fellows,[16] 29 Turing Award winners,[note 1] as well as seven Wolf Foundation Prize recipients, two Supreme Court justices of the United States, and four Pulitzer Prize winners.[16] Additionally, its alumni include many Fulbright Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Gates Cambridge Scholars, Rhodes Scholars, and members of the United States Congress.[42]

Most of Stanford is on an 8,180-acre (12.8 sq mi; 33.1 km2)[4] campus, one of the largest in the United States.[note 2] It is on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately 37 miles (60 km) southeast of San Francisco and approximately 20 miles (30 km) northwest of San Jose. Stanford received $4.5 billion in 2006 and spent more than $2.1 billion in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped.[73]

Stanford's main campus includes a census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County,[74] although some of the university land (such as the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as within the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley.[75]

The central campus includes a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, an irrigation reservoir), home to the vulnerable California tiger salamander. As of 2012, Lake Lagunita was often dry and the university had no plans to artificially fill it.[76] Heavy rains in January 2023 refilled Lake Lagunita to up to 8 feet of depth.[77] Two other reservoirs, Searsville Lake on San Francisquito Creek and Felt Lake,[78] are on more remote sections of the founding grant.