Harvard University, oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (founded 1636) and one of the nation’s most prestigious. The main university campus lies along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few miles west of downtown Boston. Learn more about Harvard in this article.
Harvard University, oldest institution of higher learning in the United States (founded 1636) and one of the nation’s most prestigious. It is one of the Ivy League schools. The main university campus lies along the Charles River in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few miles west of downtown Boston. Harvard’s total enrollment is about 23,000. Harvard’s history began when a college was established at New Towne, which was later renamed Cambridge for the English alma mater of some of the leading colonists. Classes began in the summer of 1638 with one master in a single frame house and a “college yard.” Harvard
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When it comes to prestige in US education, few names carry more weight than Harvard University.
Founded in 1636 in Cambridge, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, as New College, Harvard is the US’s oldest institution of higher education.
People today might think of Harvard for its legal and business studies but from its early days it was known as a centre of scientific research.
Less known is the role that women played at Harvard in developing astronomy as a science. Prominent among these starry women was Henrietta Swan Leavitt, born on 4 July 1868 in Lancaster, Massachusetts.
In 1888 Leavitt entered the Society for the Collegiate Instruction of Women, which later became Radcliffe College, an offshoot of male-only Harvard. Her studies ranged from classical Greek, fine arts and philosophy, to analytical geometry and differential calculus.