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About Harvard
Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. It is also the first and oldest corporation in North America.
Initially called "New College" or "the college at New Towne", the institution was named Harvard College on March 13, 1639, after a young clergyman named John Harvard, a graduate of England's Emmanuel College, Cambridge (a college of the University of Cambridge) and St Olave's Grammar School, Orpington in the UK, bequeathed the College his library of four hundred books and half his personal wealth, $1,500 or seven hundred fifty pounds sterling. The earliest known official reference to Harvard as a "university" occurs in the new Massachusetts Constitution of 1780.
During his forty year 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. Eliot also was responsible for publication of the now-famous "Harvard Classics", a collection of "great books" from multiple disciplines published by P. F. Collier and Sons beginning in 1909 that offered a college education "in fifteen minutes a day of reading"; the collection soon became known as "Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf". During his unprecedentedly influential presidency, Eliot, a prolific book and magazine writer and widely traveled speaker in the pre-radio age, became so widely recognized a public figure that by his death in 1926 his name (and, not coincidentally, Harvard's) had become synonymous with the universal aspirations of American higher education.
In 1999, Radcliffe College, founded in 1879 as the "Harvard Annex for Women", merged formally with Harvard University, becoming the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Harvard's library collection contains more than 15 million volumes, making it the largest academic library in the world, and the fourth among the five "mega-libraries" of the world (after the British Library, the Library of Congress, and the French Bibliothèque nationale, but ahead of the New York Public Library). Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any non-profit organization except for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, standing at $34.9 billion as of 2007. -
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Quotes about Harvard
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“ It was clear to us that this was the place for the high performance computing center and Harvard is delighted to be here. ”
In Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center groundbreaking in Holyoke draws state, college officials -
“ I'm not saying that everyone needs to be a Ph.D. scientist at Amgen or has to have an MBA from Harvard at Fidelity but many of these jobs are chemists, lab technicians and research associates who just require an associate's degree or a bachelor's degree or a certificate of training from New England Tech. ”
Keith W. Stokes in Rhode Island: Stokes envisions jobs, retrained workforce -
“ Student entrepreneurs don't respect academic silos, but nevertheless often found it hard to connect across school boundaries. If we could find ways to facilitate those interactions, bringing them together in an environment that stimulates the sharing of ingenuity, knowledge, and skills, innovation and creativity could flourish. The potential of a unified Harvard could partially be realized. ”
In Harvard Business School adds incubator, expands with Tata gift
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Mentioned In 57 Articles
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Massachusetts colleges rank high in graduation-rate study
Explore Business News (Oct 3 2012)
...etter. The cumulative graduation rate for all Massachusetts private schools in the study was 70.1 percent. Harvard University led all schools in the nation with an undergraduate graduation rate of 97.4 percent in 2... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts Harvard Yale
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Boston One of 10 Cities for Fast-Growth Companies
Which city in America is home to the most Inc. 5000 companies? It's home to many in the high tech and new media sectors. Hint: It's not San Francisco. This year, accessible business resources and tax incentives, as well as a healthy presence of venture capital funding, helped these 10 metro areas sustain the largest number of fast-growing companies. Which city in America is home to the most Inc. 5000 companies? Click through the Gallery to discover the city with 350 of the fastest growers, many in the high tech and new media sectors. Hint: It's not ...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: MIT Harvard Thomas Menino
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Harvard, BU, Northeastern top Olympic medal count among Mass. colleges
Explore Business News (Aug 6 2012)
... colleges (slide show). In the all-time medal count, Harvard leads other Boston-area colleges by a long mile. Harvard-educated athletes had, going into Monday's events, racked up 91 medals in summer and winter games sinc...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts Harvard
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Mass General Hospital tops in nation
Explore wwlp.com (Jul 17 2012)
...ter Slavin. Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The 950-bed medical center each year admits about 48,000 inpatients and handles nearly...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: Harvard
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Work near end at Holyoke computing ctr.
Explore wwlp.com (Jul 16 2012)
...rt the computing needs of five of the state's most research-intensive universities, including UMass, MIT, and Harvard. Monday, crews were hard at work installing the cabinets that will house the data machines and compute...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: MIT University of Massachusetts Harvard
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Two Mass. scientists win $100K prize from J&J
Explore Mass High Tech Business News (Jun 19 2012)
...os, of University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Dr. Gary Ruvkun, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, will be given the $100,000 award in September at the New York Academy of Sciences. Acc...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts University of Massachusetts Harvard
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MIT and Harvard launch $60M online partnership
Explore Mass High Tech Business News (May 2 2012)
...rector of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab will serve as the first president of edX. At Harvard, Provost Alan Garber will direct the Harvardx effort and Faculty of Arts and Sciences Dean Michael D. ... (Read Full Article)
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Harvard named No.1 for social media use among colleges
Explore Business News (May 1 2012)
...sity and University of Notre Dame. (See the full ranking here.)Harvard was ranked No. 1 in part thanks to its Harvard Social Media Dashboard, which... In addition to its "birthplace of Facebook" title, Harvard University... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts Harvard
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New bio networking group aims to foster startups
Explore Business News (Apr 5 2012)
...ofessionals in the Boston area have a new networking outlet in the form of BiotechLikemind, the brainchild of Harvard Medical School scientist Elmar Nurmemmedov, the Patriot Ledger reports.Nurmemmedov told the Ledger he ... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Harvard
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Russia’s Maxwell Biotech fund finds a home in Boston
Explore Mass High Tech Business News (Feb 24 2012)
...fund in close proximity to the source of cutting-edge innovation, ranging from top academic centers including Harvard and MIT to dozens of biotech and medtech companies.” Earlier this month, RVC committed to being a plat... (Read Full Article)
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State explores economic growth in WMass
Explore wwlp.com (Feb 16 2012)
... said a famous example of lost talent is Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook. On a recent visit to Harvard University, he said if he were starting a company today, he would start it in Massachusetts. ... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts Harvard Raytheon Co.
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Six Steps to Put Christensen's Job-to-be-Done Theory into Practice
Explore Forbes.com (Feb 7 2012)
...as a Visiting Executive at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. I overpaid for my education, with an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master's in Public Administration from Columbia University, and a BA from Princeton...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: Harvard
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Malloy nominates six for CT judgeships
Explore HartfordBusiness.com (Jan 19 2012)
... Salem. He is a partner with Cole-Chu & Cipparone in New London. Cole-Chu received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, a Master of Arts in urban studies from Occidental College in California and a law degree f... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts M. Jodi Rell Harvard
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Holyoke Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center completes first stage of construction
Explore masslive.com (Nov 29 2011)
...stitutions,” Lt. Gov. Timothy P. Murray. said. Partners in the center are the University of Massachusetts, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston University, Northeastern University, EMC...
(Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts MIT University of Massachusetts
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Holyoke computing center gets $14.5M from MassDevelopment
Explore Mass High Tech Business News (Oct 26 2011)
... in funding commitments, including $50 million from five Massachusetts universities – Boston University, MIT, Harvard, University of Massachusetts and Northeastern – and a $24.5 million grant from the Patrick-Murray Admi... (Read Full Article)
Mentions: Massachusetts MIT Harvard
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