Harvard University: Quick Facts

Written and fact-checked by

The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last updated

Nov. 13, 2026

News •

Two skulls likely belonging to enslaved people returned to Brazil after Harvard used them in eugenics studies • Nov. 11, 2026, 5:52 PM ET (The Guardian)

Fire alarm cuts Stephen Colbert and Yo-Yo Ma Harvard event short as graduate student union pickets outside • Nov. 9, 2026, 4:54 PM ET (Los Angeles Times)

Judge dismisses Trump administration lawsuit against Harvard on admissions • Nov. 3, 2026, 6:32 PM ET (Washington Post)

Federal Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Against Harvard Over Federal Demand for Admissions Data • Nov. 2, 2026, 6:42 PM ET (U.S. News & World Report)

Concussions may disrupt testosterone for years. Researchers are connecting the dots. • Oct. 29, 2026, 2:56 PM ET (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)

Facts

Date	1636 - present
Areas Of Involvement	Coeducation
Notable Alumni	Lawrence Summers • Jerome Bruner • A. Lawrence Lowell • Hilary Putnam • Sheldon Glueck • Martha Nussbaum • Henry Adams • Gilbert N. Lewis • E.O. Wilson • Henry Kissinger • Michael Kremer • Samantha Power • Philippe Aghion • Daniel Lieberman • James Russell Lowell • Cornel West • Charles Olson • Zbigniew Brzezinski • Steven Pinker • Robert O. Keohane • Stephen Breyer • Jill Abramson • Thomas C. Schelling • Deval Patrick • Theodore R. Sizer • John Hawkes • Christopher A. Sims • Thomas S. Kuhn • John Tate • Doris Kearns Goodwin • Walter Gilbert • Howard Gardner • George Steiner • Tenley Albright • Rosabeth Moss Kanter • McGeorge Bundy • Oliver Wendell Holmes • Roy J. Glauber • John Franklin Enders • Joseph E. Murray • Martin Karplus • Vladimir Voevodsky • Sheldon Glashow • Andrew Brimmer • Carol Gilligan • Samuel Eliot Morison • Charles Townsend Copeland • David Mumford • George Herbert Hitchings • Nicolaas Bloembergen • Hironaka Heisuke • Kenneth E. Iverson • Mario R. Capecchi • John Livingston Lowes • Theda Skocpol • John H. Van Vleck • Alfred Kinsey • Eric S. Maskin • Theodore William Richards • Emil W. Haury • Dudley R. Herschbach • Roger D. Kornberg • Maxime Bôcher • William Gilson Farlow • Barack Obama • George W. Bush • Noam Chomsky • Franklin D. Roosevelt • John G. Roberts, Jr. • John F. Kennedy • Henry David Thoreau • Theodore Roosevelt • T.S. Eliot • Ketanji Brown Jackson • Robert Frost • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. • Steve Bannon • Vivek Ramaswamy • David Hogg • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Antonin Scalia • Eleanor Glueck • William B. Castle • Arne Duncan • Juan Manuel Santos • Jack Smith • Vannevar Bush • Bill Ackman • Vivek Murthy • James Talarico • Kevin Young • W.E.B. Du Bois • Mark Carney • Álvaro Uribe • Mark Zuckerberg • Maura Healey • Lai Ching-te • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf • Elise Stefanik • Mitt Romney • Jared Kushner • John Lithgow • Klaus Schwab • Jack Schlossberg • William Moulton Marston • Peter Navarro • Ron DeSantis • Saul Kripke • Sebastián Piñera • Duma Boko • Ted Cruz • Tom Cotton • Stanley Milgram • Ted Kaczynski • Ben Shapiro • Dan Sullivan • Darren Aronofsky • William H. Prescott • J. Robert Oppenheimer • Merrick Garland • Pete Buttigieg • Jane Fraser • Tom Wilson • Jill Stein • Jean Berko Gleason • Ben Bernanke • Karl Deisseroth • Frank Gehry • Aga Khan IV • John Key • W.L. Mackenzie King • Freida McFadden • Rashida Jones • Benazir Bhutto • John Adams • Yvette Cooper • Al Gore • Jonny Kim • Jack Reed • James Murdoch • Robert Lowell • Michael Schur • Tommy Lee Jones • Michael Ritchie • Antony Blinken • Neil Gorsuch • Abhijit Banerjee • Colson Whitehead • Abigail Johnson • Ma Ying-jeou • Kevin Warsh • Beaumont Newhall • Michelle Obama • Michael Bloomberg • Harold H. Burton • Conan O’Brien • Amanda Gorman • Ruben Gallego • Increase Mather • Barney Frank • Bill O’Reilly • Jeanne Gang • Bryan Stevenson • Charles H. Bennett • Sheryl Sandberg • Mehmet Oz • Chuck Schumer • Paul Farmer • Mark Warner • Meg Whitman • Al Franken • Ben Sasse • John Fetterman • Masako • Lee Hsien Loong • Dana Gioia • Stephanie Wilson • Joseph P. Kennedy • Robert B. Wilson • Francis Fukuyama • Clive Davis • Donald Tsang • Cardinal Bernard Law • Michael Crichton • Terrence Malick • Dambisa Moyo • Yo-Yo Ma • Neil deGrasse Tyson • Paul Volcker • Daniel C. Dennett • Daniel Ellsberg • Richard Theodore Greener • Gary Ruvkun • John Updike • David Baker • Bill Frist • Adrian Piper • Ralph Nader • Marvin Minsky • Celeste Ng
Related People	Lawrence Summers • Drew Gilpin Faust • Jerome Bruner • Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage • Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz • James B. Conant • Nathan Pusey • Charles William Eliot • John Harvard • Charles Francis Adams III • Frederic Ward Putnam • George Peabody • Henry Dunster • Edward Everett • Roland B. Dixon