Stanford University is a center of learning, discovery, creativity and innovation, dedicated to advancing knowledge for the benefit of humanity. Stanford University was founded by former California Governor and Senator Leland Stanford and Jane Stanford to memorialize their son, Leland Stanford Junior. Their intent was to establish a "university of high degree" that would "qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life and promote the public welfare by exercising an influence on behalf of humanity and civilization." Located in the San Francisco Bay Area within the traditional territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe, Stanford welcomed its first students in 1891. Today, Stanford's areas of excellence span seven schools along with interdisciplinary research and policy institutes, athletics, and the arts. Stanford educates students for a life of purpose, creates knowledge, and responds to the urgent challenges of our times by accelerating solutions for human health, society, and our planet. Stanford offers bachelor's, master's, doctoral and professional degrees. Stanford enrolls about 7,500 undergraduate students and over 9,000 graduate and professional school students. 129 Stanford students have been Rhodes Scholars. Stanford has 2,304 members of the professoriate faculty. Fifty-four percent of the faculty have earned tenure. Stanford faculty have won 36 Nobel Prizes since the university's founding. The faculty currently includes 21 Nobel laureates, 4 Pulitzer Prize winners, 33 MacArthur Fellows and 9 recipients of the National Medal of Science. There are more than 7,500 externally sponsored research projects throughout the university. Basic research at Stanford has made possible applications from microwaves to GPS, heart transplants to gene splicing, digital sound synthesis to modern web-search algorithms. Stanford's entrepreneurial spirit has helped create more than 39,900 companies since the 1930s. Among the companies founded, built or led by Stanford graduates or faculty are Google, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard, Gap, eBay, Instagram, Netflix, Cisco Systems, Nike, and IDEO. In the area of social innovation, members of the Stanford community have created nonprofit organizations including Kiva, Special Olympics, and the Acumen Fund.
