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Cornell University
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Cornell University Uris Library at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, features a tall clock tower and stone facade, with autumn trees in the foreground.
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Date:
1865 - present
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higher education
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Cornell University
Cornell University Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University, New York City.

Cornell University

university, Ithaca, New York, United States
Written and fact-checked by
Britannica Editors
Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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Last updated
•History
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Cornell University, coeducational institution of higher education in Ithaca, New York, U.S. It is one of the eight Ivy League schools, widely regarded for their high academic standards, selectivity in admissions, and social prestige. Cornell is situated on a 745-acre (301-hectare) campus occupying hills that command a wide view of Cayuga Lake (one of the Finger Lakes) and the surrounding farm, conservation, and recreation land.

Founding history

Uris Library at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, features a tall clock tower and stone facade, with autumn trees in the foreground.
Cornell University's Uris Library

Founded as the land-grant university of New York state under the Morrill Act of 1862, Cornell was also privately endowed by Ezra Cornell, a founder of the Western Union Telegraph Company. Cornell established the school’s financial foundations, and diplomat and scholar Andrew Dickson White established its form. A charter was granted in 1865, and the university opened in 1868 with White as its first president. Nonsectarian from the beginning, it offered a much broader curriculum than was common for the day and set out to embrace any investigation and instruction deemed useful. Cornell was the first American university to be divided into colleges offering different degrees, and it was among the first Eastern universities to admit women (1870).

Programs and areas of study

Cornell University’s 20 colleges and schools include four state-assisted “contract” colleges in Ithaca that specialize in agriculture and life sciences, human ecology, industrial and labor relations, and veterinary medicine. Other undergraduate colleges offer instruction in architecture, art, and planning; engineering; and hotel administration. The College of Arts and Sciences is the largest college at Cornell. Professional and graduate schools include those for law, business management, and medicine. Weill Cornell University Medical College is part of a complex of medical teaching and research institutions in New York City, that maintains partnerships with New York-Presbyterian Hospital, the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, Hospital for Special Surgery, and Houston Methodist Hospital. Total enrollment in the university is approximately 26,000.

Notable alumni

Cornell’s alumni have made noteworthy contributions to many areas of American artistic, scientific, and political development. Alumni include photographer Margaret Bourke-White, architect Richard Meier, authors Pearl S. Buck, E.B. White, Thomas Pynchon, and Toni Morrison, astronaut Mae Jemison, legal figures Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Janet Reno, politicians Gabby Giffords, Elisa Slotkin, and Eileen Higgins, economist Claudia Goldin, business people Ratan Tata and Robert F. Smith, comedian Bill Maher, actors Christopher Reeve and Jane Lynch, journalists and commentators Keith Olbermann and Ann Coulter, and scientists Barbara McClintock, Vera Rubin, and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (1984–2022).

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by Mindy Johnston.