Stanford University

Stanford University is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It is organized around seven schools of study on an 8,180-acre campus, one of the largest in the nation. Its academic programs span the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, engineering, sustainability, medicine, law, education, and business.

Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891. It is a private, non-profit university administered as a corporate trust governed by a privately appointed board of trustees. By 2021, it had 2,288 tenure-line faculty, senior fellows, center fellows, and medical faculty on staff.

The university houses the Hoover Institution, a public policy think tank. It operates the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory for the Department of Energy. Stanford Research Park was established in Palo Alto in 1951 as the world's first university research park.