Cornell University

Cornell University, private, coeducational land-grant institution of higher learning in Ithaca, New York, and one of the eight members of the group of traditional eastern schools known as the Ivy League. The university was chartered by the state of New York in 1865 and named after American banker Ezra Cornell.

Cornell University pioneered higher education in the United States by offering studies in the classical disciplines along with the agricultural and engineering courses required of a land-grant university, a policy begun by the university’s first president, Andrew Dickson White. Some of the university’s divisions are state-supported: the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; College of Human Ecology; School of Industrial and Labor Relations; and College of Veterinary Medicine. The private divisions of the university are the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning; College of Arts and Sciences; College of Engineering; School of Hotel Administration; the Law School; and Johnson Graduate School of Management. The university’s Medical College and Graduate School of Medical Sciences are located on the campus in New York City.

The university’s 20 centers for specialized learning in the arts and sciences include seven government-designated national centers for learning: the Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering; Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source; Laboratory of Nuclear Studies; Mathematical Sciences Institute; National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center; National Nanofabrication Facility; and National Science and Technology Center for Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization.

The university’s library contains notable collections on Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Latin America, as well as collections of Dante, Petrarch, William Wordsworth, James Joyce, and George Bernard Shaw. Notable graduates of Cornell University include authors E. B. White and Toni Morrison, who won the Pulitzer Prize in literature in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993.