Founded in 1885 on a Palo Alto stock farm, Stanford University has grown into one of the world’s leading research universities.
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Our History
The Early Years
A university to promote the public welfare, rooted in the American West.
Out of grief, a founding vision
Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland Stanford, a former California governor and U.S. senator, and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, as a memorial to their only child, Leland Stanford Jr. After young Leland died of typhoid fever in 1884, at the age of 15, his parents determined that “the children of California shall be our children.”
The institution, legally named Leland Stanford Junior University, opened on Oct. 1, 1891. It was built on the Stanford family’s Palo Alto stock farm, an 8,180-acre property located on land traditionally inhabited by the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.
The Stanfords and founding President David Starr Jordan aimed for their new university to be nonsectarian, coeducational, and affordable, to produce “cultured and useful graduates,” and to combine liberal arts education with training in science and engineering. It was part of a vanguard of schools in the late 19th century that came to exemplify the modern research university.
Its object: to qualify its students for personal success, and direct usefulness in life. And its purposes: to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization, teaching the blessings of liberty regulated by law, and inculcating love and reverence for the great principles of government as derived from the inalienable rights of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
—The Founding Grant
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The Boston firm Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge collaborated with Frederick Law Olmsted – best known for his design of New York City’s Central Park – to develop the university’s final architectural plan, with its distinctive arches, quadrangles, and arcades.
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Growth and growing pains
A series of setbacks marked the university’s first few decades. With the institution facing severe financial shortages after her husband’s death in 1893, Jane Stanford personally funded the school by selling many of her remaining assets, including a jewelry collection that fetched $500,000. A typhoid epidemic in 1903 killed nine students and sickened many more, prompting hundreds to leave school. And the 1906 earthquake dealt a further blow, killing two people and destroying several campus buildings, some so new they had never been occupied.
Despite those challenges, over the next 30 years, Stanford added graduate schools in law (1893), medicine (1907), and education (1917). University benefactor and trustee Herbert Hoover, the future U.S. president and a member of Stanford’s Pioneer Class of 1895, worked with leadership to professionalize university operations in the 1920s and helped put Stanford on a sound financial footing. He founded an institute to collect global political material – today’s Hoover Institution Library & Archives – and led the creation of the Graduate School of Business, which opened in 1925.
An Era of Innovation
In the 20th century, Stanford faculty and students developed technologies that changed how societies live, work, and communicate.
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The seeds of Silicon Valley
By the mid-1930s, technology was driving a new era of innovation. Engineering Professor Frederick Terman, a future dean and provost who has been dubbed the “Father of Silicon Valley,” encouraged Stanford students not only to develop but also to commercialize their ideas. In 1937, physicists Russell Varian, Sigurd Varian, and William Hansen developed the klystron ultrahigh-frequency vacuum tube, paving the way for commercial air navigation, satellite communication, and high-energy particle accelerators. In 1939, graduate students William Hewlett and David Packard developed the precision audio oscillator, the first low-cost method of measuring audio frequencies, and spun it into the company now known as HP.
It was the beginning of a revolution that would eventually cement Stanford’s reputation as a worldwide leader in technology transfer.
In 1951, the university developed its Stanford Research Park to house firms led by such innovators. Varian Associates became the first tenants.
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Stanford engineers invented the klystron, the first significantly powerful source of radio waves in the microwave range. | Stanford University Archives
Post-World War II research advances
The post-World War II era saw an explosion of research advances at Stanford in engineering, molecular biology, medicine, and economic sciences.
Today’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, managed under license from the U.S. Department of Energy, opened in 1962. The first website in North America went online at SLAC 29 years later. Advances in particle physics developed at SLAC led to the Linac Coherent Light Source, whose ability to capture ultrafast images of chemical changes at the atomic scale has made it a global destination for pharmaceutical research.
The Cold War gave rise to “the Dish,” a radio telescope that is a familiar landmark in the foothills behind campus. The hill on which the Dish stands is a conservation area open to the public, used by half a million visitors a year.
Node by node, a foundation for the internet and AI
Deep in the foothills beyond the Dish, a much smaller structure yielded epochal discoveries when it became home to the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL), founded by John McCarthy and Les Earnest in 1963. SAIL researchers devised the first interactive system for computer design, as well as pioneering work on computer vision, robotics, laser printing, and automated assembly. The world’s first office desktop computer displays appeared at SAIL in 1971.
Work by Stanford faculty at the Stanford Research Institute in the late 1960s set the stage for the development of the internet. SRI innovations included the introduction of protocols that enabled disparate computer networks to communicate, creating a “network of networks.”
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Myth and mentorship in the 1960s
The 1960s unleashed an era of creative experimentation and expression, exemplified by the publication in 1962 of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey. Kesey wrote the book while he was a student in Stanford’s creative writing program under the tutelage of Pulitzer Prize-winning author and environmentalist Wallace Stegner. Stegner also taught poet Wendell Berry; future Pulitzer winner Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove; and Sandra Day O’Connor, who would become the first female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Stegner and his work were later memorialized by the establishment of a creative writing fellowship program in his name.
Medical breakthroughs
Stanford Hospital, which had moved from its original location in San Francisco to the Palo Alto campus in 1959, emerged as one of the world’s leading teaching and research hospitals. On Jan. 6, 1968, cardiothoracic surgeon Norman Shumway performed the first successful adult heart transplant in the United States. Thirteen years later, Shumway and fellow Stanford surgeon Bruce Reitz performed the world’s first successful combined heart-lung transplant.
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Dr. Norman Shumway (right) performs heart surgery. | Stanford University Archives
Recombinant DNA research by Stanford chemist Paul Berg produced foundational techniques for gene splicing. Those discoveries and their application helped spawn the modern biotechnology industry and earned Berg a Nobel Prize.
Environmental stewardship
In the 1970s, Stanford sought new ways to transform society and preserve the environment, forging new paths for service and stewardship.
Aiming to reduce car traffic on campus, Stanford introduced the free Marguerite shuttle, named after a 19th-century horse that pulled a jitney between campus and Palo Alto. The Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve was designated in 1973 to help protect the green “lungs” of the Peninsula and foster environmental research.
Google, born in a dorm room
In 1997, graduate students Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a “large-scale hypertextual web search engine” and dubbed their algorithm PageRank. A year later, using computers in their dorm rooms as a data center, Page and Brin founded Google.
Since 2000, Stanford researchers have unlocked transformational insights and invented new research methods that enabled advancements in cancer therapy, psychology, robotics, AI, and a host of other fields.
Making Space for New Ideas
From the arts and humanities to medicine and design, Stanford is built for fresh perspectives.
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An ambitious campus evolves
The multidisciplinary Stanford Humanities Center, the first of its kind in the nation and still the largest, opened in 1980 to advance research into the historical, philosophical, literary, artistic, and cultural dimensions of human experience.
The James H. Clark Center for Biomedical Engineering and Sciences opened in 2003 as the geographic and intellectual nexus between the schools of Engineering and Medicine and the home of Bio-X, a pioneering interdisciplinary biosciences institute. Its collaboration-friendly architecture set the tone for future buildings, furthering the interdisciplinarity that has become a hallmark of Stanford.
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The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford – known informally as the d.school – opened in the School of Engineering in 2005, bringing students and faculty from radically different backgrounds together to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges.
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During 2016, Stanford celebrated its 125th year. A revamped Roble Gym debuted a dedicated “arts gym” to help make art an integral part of the student experience. “Old Chem,” one of Stanford’s first buildings, received new life as the Sapp Center for Science Teaching and Learning. The School of Humanities and Sciences launched the Humanities Core, a new certificate and minor program providing undergraduates a structured pathway to explore fundamental questions of human existence. That year, Stanford also expanded its Bing Overseas Studies Program and enhanced undergraduate research opportunities.
In 2011, the Graduate School of Business moved into a new home, the Knight Management Center, a $345 million campus within a campus that promised to unlock an ambitious expansion of scholarship and research innovation. It was named for Phil Knight, the Nike founder and lead donor for the project. Knight, who earned his MBA at the GSB in 1962, wrote his business plan for Nike while attending the school.
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The Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital more than doubled its space for pediatric and obstetric care after it opened its new 521,000-square-foot main building in 2017. The new facility received the LEED Platinum award for sustainability, the second children’s hospital in the world to receive that designation.
Pioneering online learning
In 2011, Stanford initiated an extensive effort to provide free online courses, to promote lifelong learning and share knowledge with the general public. Early “MOOCs” – massive open online courses – included offerings from Stanford computer scientists Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, who founded Coursera in 2012. Today, more than 1.4 million people around the world access Stanford virtual instruction each year, much of it free.
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Stanford historian Clayborne Carson (left) and his former research assistant and Stanford alumna Zainab Taymuree film a session as part of Carson’s free online course on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. | Kurt Hickman
An Arts District to nourish human expression
A significant physical transformation followed the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which again challenged the university’s resilience and vision. Stanford renovated the Green Library’s heavily damaged west wing as the Bing Wing. The similarly damaged Stanford Art Museum reopened in 1999 as the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts.
The art museum renovations also set the stage for an ambitious reimagining of Stanford’s efforts to nourish and celebrate artistic expression in all its forms. Three new buildings rose in areas contiguous to the museum: Bing Concert Hall, the McMurtry Building for experiential arts learning, and the Anderson Collection, one of the world’s most outstanding private assemblies of modern and contemporary American art. In combination with the venerable Frost Amphitheater – which underwent a complete renovation in 2019 – the result was a sparkling Arts District that today plays host to dozens of concerts, exhibitions, and events each year.
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The Anderson Collection, which opened in 2014, is one of the world’s most outstanding private assemblies of modern and contemporary American art. | Andrew Brodhead
Advancing the Frontier
Stanford teams are expanding what’s known and working to develop meaningful solutions to the world’s pressing challenges.
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A new school of sustainability
Signaling its long-term commitment to helping solve problems associated with climate change, the university in 2022 established the Doerr School of Sustainability, the first new school at Stanford in more than 70 years.
It was made possible by a $1.1 billion gift from venture capital leader John Doerr. Highly interdisciplinary in nature, the Doerr School of Sustainability supports collaborations among dozens of faculty in multiple academic areas to address the complexities involved in planetary challenges.
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Human-centered AI
Years before the rollout and rapid adoption of advanced AI chatbots, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) was advocating for broader public engagement with the technology. Founded in 2019 by Stanford computer science Professor Fei-Fei Li, the institute aims to advance AI research, education, and policy to improve the human condition. It provides research funding, convenes civic leaders and policymakers, and produces an annual AI index report, aiming to shape the development of AI and its governance to increase human well-being.
Across Stanford, scholars work to understand AI in the context of its implementation in civil society. Researchers expand AI’s technical capabilities while studying and communicating its impacts – on dimensions from privacy and mental health to labor and the economy.
Today, Stanford scientists are using AI to map disease risk from space, speed drug discovery, and model climate patterns. Law professors and students are developing AI tools for legal services and examining AI’s impact on access to justice. And at HAI, the effort is to invite in more students, stakeholders, and communities to ensure that AI lives up to its transformative potential.
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Taking aim at cancer
With around 2 million cases diagnosed per year in the U.S., cancer disrupts lives, exacting a physical, emotional, and financial toll on patients and caregivers and taxing our social safety net and health care systems. Stanford research teams have advanced the fundamental science that informs our understanding of cancer and converted that knowledge to action.
In 1955, Stanford radiologist Henry Kaplan worked with campus physicists to develop the first medical linear accelerator in the Western Hemisphere, successfully treating a 2-year-old boy with an eye tumor. Medical linear accelerators are now integral to radiation therapy.
The first immunotherapy to receive approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in 2010, was a cell-based therapy developed by Stanford Professor Edgar Engleman to treat prostate cancer. Stanford doctors continue to drive innovation in immunotherapy. In 2024, Stanford Medicine became the first center in the nation to use cell-based therapy to treat metastatic melanoma. That same year, after a successful clinical trial led by Stanford Medicine professors Crystal Mackall and Michelle Monje, the FDA fast-tracked approval for the use of CAR-T cells – engineered immune cells – to fight pediatric brain tumors.
From stem cell and bone marrow transplants to ultrafast radiation and ultracompact proton therapy, Stanford doctors design and leverage cutting-edge treatments. A next-generation cancer center planned for Redwood City will integrate treatment, research, and education for a high-touch, personalized approach to patient care.
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On June 4, 2026, a child with a rare brain tumor became the first patient to receive treatment at Stanford Medicine’s new proton therapy facility. | Kurt Hickman
A 50-year NCAA championship streak
Underwritten principally by Stanford alumnus and developer John Arrillaga, athletics facilities received major upgrades between 2004 and 2026. A rebuilt, 50,000-seat Stanford Stadium opened in 2006, the centerpiece of a broad recommitment to the university’s world-class athletics program.
In 2026, when men’s gymnastics clinched a national title, Stanford secured a 50-year NCAA championship streak, significantly outdistancing its closest challenger. Stanford teams have won more national championships than any other Division I program, including titles in 20 different sports.