The University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago)

8 min readMay 7, 2021

The University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 1890, its main campus is located in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood.[6] It enrolled 16,445 students in Fall 2019, including 6,286 undergraduates and 10,159 graduate students.[1] The University of Chicago is ranked among the best universities in the world by major education publications,[7][8][9][10] and it is among the most selective in the United States.[11][12][13]

The university is composed of one undergraduate college and five graduate research divisions, which contain all of the university’s graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees. Chicago has eight professional schools: the Law School, the Booth School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Divinity School, the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies, and the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. The university has additional campuses and centers in London, Paris, Beijing, Delhi, and Hong Kong, as well as in downtown Chicago.[14][15]

University of Chicago scholars have played a major role in the development of many academic disciplines, including economics, law, literary criticism, mathematics, religion, sociology, and the behavioralism school of political science, establishing the Chicago schools in various fields.[16][17][18][19][20] Chicago’s Metallurgical Laboratory produced the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction in Chicago Pile-1 beneath the viewing stands of the university’s Stagg Field.[21] Advances in chemistry led to the “radiocarbon revolution” in the carbon-14 dating of ancient life and objects.[22] The university research efforts include administration of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory, as well as the Marine Biological Laboratory. The university is also home to the University of Chicago Press, the largest university press in the United States.[23] The Barack Obama Presidential Center is expected to be housed at the university and will include both the Obama presidential library and offices of the Obama Foundation.[24]

The University of Chicago’s students, faculty, and staff have included 100 Nobel laureates as of 2020, giving it the fourth-most affiliated Nobel laureates of any university in the world.[25] The university’s faculty members and alumni also include 10 Fields Medalists,[26] 4 Turing Award winners, 52 MacArthur Fellows,[27] 26 Marshall Scholars,[28] 27 Pulitzer Prize winners,[29] 20 National Humanities Medalists,[30] 29 living billionaire graduates,[31] and have won eight Olympic medals.

History[edit]

Main article: History of the University of Chicago

An early convocation ceremony at the University of Chicago.

Early years[edit]

Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about the founding and early years.

Further information: Old University of Chicago

The University of Chicago was incorporated as a coeducational [32]:137 institution in 1890 by the American Baptist Education Society, using $400,000 donated to the ABES to match a $600,000 donation from Baptist oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller,[33] and including land donated by Marshall Field.[34] While the Rockefeller donation provided money for academic operations and long-term endowment, it was stipulated that such money could not be used for buildings. The Hyde Park campus was financed by donations from wealthy Chicagoans like Silas B. Cobb who provided the funds for the campus’ first building, Cobb Lecture Hall, and matched Marshall Field’s pledge of $100,000. Other early benefactors included businessmen Charles L. Hutchinson (trustee, treasurer and donor of Hutchinson Commons), Martin A. Ryerson (president of the board of trustees and donor of the Ryerson Physical Laboratory) Adolphus Clay Bartlett and Leon Mandel, who funded the construction of the gymnasium and assembly hall, and George C. Walker of the Walker Museum, a relative of Cobb who encouraged his inaugural donation for facilities.[35]

The Hyde Park campus continued the legacy of the original university of the same name, which had closed in the 1880s after its campus was foreclosed on.[36] What became known as the Old University of Chicago had been founded by a small group of Baptist educators in 1856 through a land endowment from Senator Stephen A. Douglas. After a fire, it closed in 1886.[37] Alumni from the Old University of Chicago are recognized as alumni of the present University of Chicago.[38] The university’s depiction on its coat of arms of a phoenix rising from the ashes is a reference to the fire, foreclosure, and demolition of the Old University of Chicago campus.[39] As an homage to this pre-1890 legacy, a single stone from the rubble of the original Douglas Hall on 34th Place was brought to the current Hyde Park location and set into the wall of the Classics Building. These connections have led the dean of the college and University of Chicago and professor of history John Boyer to conclude that the University of Chicago has, “a plausible genealogy as a pre–Civil War institution”.[40]

The University of Chicago (UChicago, U of C, or Chicago)

Contents

History[edit]

Early years[edit]

Written by Ar Rabble