Organic chemistry
Organic chemistry is a subdiscipline of chemistry that studies the structure and reactions of organic compounds, which contain carbon in covalent bonding. Study of structure determines their chemical formula. Study of properties includes physical and chemical properties, evaluation of chemical reactivity to understand their behavior; the study of organic reactions includes the chemical synthesis of natural products and polymers, study of individual organic molecules in the laboratory and via theoretical study. The range of chemicals studied in organic chemistry includes hydrocarbons as well as compounds based on carbon, but containing other elements oxygen, sulfur and the halogens. Organometallic chemistry is the study of compounds containing carbon–metal bonds. In addition, contemporary research focuses on organic chemistry involving other organometallics including the lanthanides, but the transition metals zinc, palladium, cobalt and chromium. Organic compounds constitute the majority of known chemicals.
The bonding patterns of carbon, with its valence of four—formal single and triple bonds, plus structures with delocalized electrons—make the array of organic compounds structurally diverse, their range of applications enormous. They form the basis of, or are constituents of, many commercial products including pharmaceuticals; the study of organic chemistry overlaps organometallic chemistry and biochemistry, but with medicinal chemistry, polymer chemistry, materials science. Before the nineteenth century, chemists believed that compounds obtained from living organisms were endowed with a vital force that distinguished them from inorganic compounds. According to the concept of vitalism, organic matter was endowed with a "vital force". During the first half of the nineteenth century, some of the first systematic studies of organic compounds were reported. Around 1816 Michel Chevreul started a study of soaps made from various alkalis, he separated the different acids. Since these were all individual compounds, he demonstrated that it was possible to make a chemical change in various fats, producing new compounds, without "vital force".
In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler produced the organic chemical urea, a constituent of urine, from inorganic starting materials, in what is now called the Wöhler synthesis. Although Wöhler himself was cautious about claiming he had disproved vitalism, this was the first time a substance thought to be organic was synthesized in the laboratory without biological starting materials; the event is now accepted as indeed disproving the doctrine of vitalism. In 1856 William Henry Perkin, while trying to manufacture quinine accidentally produced the organic dye now known as Perkin's mauve, his discovery, made known through its financial success increased interest in organic chemistry. A crucial breakthrough for organic chemistry was the concept of chemical structure, developed independently in 1858 by both Friedrich August Kekulé and Archibald Scott Couper. Both researchers suggested that tetravalent carbon atoms could link to each other to form a carbon lattice, that the detailed patterns of atomic bonding could be discerned by skillful interpretations of appropriate chemical reactions.
The era of the pharmaceutical industry began in the last decade of the 19th century when the manufacturing of acetylsalicylic acid—more referred to as aspirin—in Germany was started by Bayer. By 1910 Paul Ehrlich and his laboratory group began developing arsenic-based arsphenamine, as the first effective medicinal treatment of syphilis, thereby initiated the medical practice of chemotherapy. Ehrlich popularized the concepts of "magic bullet" drugs and of systematically improving drug therapies, his laboratory made decisive contributions to developing antiserum for diphtheria and standardizing therapeutic serums. Early examples of organic reactions and applications were found because of a combination of luck and preparation for unexpected observations; the latter half of the 19th century however witnessed systematic studies of organic compounds. The development of synthetic indigo is illustrative; the production of indigo from plant sources dropped from 19,000 tons in 1897 to 1,000 tons by 1914 thanks to the synthetic methods developed by Adolf von Baeyer.
In 2002, 17,000 tons of synthetic indigo were produced from petrochemicals. In the early part of the 20th century and enzymes were shown to be large organic molecules, petroleum was shown to be of biological origin; the multiple-step synthesis of complex organic compounds is called total synthesis. Total synthesis of complex natural compounds increased in complexity to terpineol. For example, cholesterol-related compounds have opened ways to synthesize complex human hormones and their modified derivatives. Since the start of the 20th century, complexity of total syntheses has been increased to include molecules of high complexity such as lysergic acid and vitamin B12; the discovery of petroleum and the development of the petrochemical industry spurred the development of organic chemistry. Converting individual petroleum compounds into different types of compounds by various chemical processes led to organic reactions enabling a broad range of
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city proper covers 48 square miles with an estimated population of 685,094 in 2017, making it the most populous city in New England. Boston is the seat of Suffolk County as well, although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999; the city is the economic and cultural anchor of a larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country. As a combined statistical area, this wider commuting region is home to some 8.2 million people, making it the sixth-largest in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England, it was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Siege of Boston.
Upon gaining U. S. independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation, its rich history attracts many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone drawing more than 20 million visitors per year. Boston's many firsts include the United States' first public park, first public or state school and first subway system; the Boston area's many colleges and universities make it an international center of higher education, including law, medicine and business, the city is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 startups. Boston's economic base includes finance and business services, information technology, government activities. Households in the city claim the highest average rate of philanthropy in the United States; the city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings.
Boston's early European settlers had first called the area Trimountaine but renamed it Boston after Boston, England, the origin of several prominent colonists. The renaming on September 7, 1630, was by Puritan colonists from England who had moved over from Charlestown earlier that year in quest for fresh water, their settlement was limited to the Shawmut Peninsula, at that time surrounded by the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River and connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus. The peninsula is thought to have been inhabited as early as 5000 BC. In 1629, the Massachusetts Bay Colony's first governor John Winthrop led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, a key founding document of the city. Puritan ethics and their focus on education influenced its early history. Over the next 130 years, the city participated in four French and Indian Wars, until the British defeated the French and their Indian allies in North America. Boston was the largest town in British America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century.
Boston's oceanfront location made it a lively port, the city engaged in shipping and fishing during its colonial days. However, Boston stagnated in the decades prior to the Revolution. By the mid-18th century, New York City and Philadelphia surpassed Boston in wealth. Boston encountered financial difficulties as other cities in New England grew rapidly. Many of the crucial events of the American Revolution occurred near Boston. Boston's penchant for mob action along with the colonists' growing distrust in Britain fostered a revolutionary spirit in the city; when the British government passed the Stamp Act in 1765, a Boston mob ravaged the homes of Andrew Oliver, the official tasked with enforcing the Act, Thomas Hutchinson the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. The British sent two regiments to Boston in 1768 in an attempt to quell the angry colonists; this did not sit well with the colonists. In 1770, during the Boston Massacre, the army killed several people in response to a mob in Boston.
The colonists compelled the British to withdraw their troops. The event was publicized and fueled a revolutionary movement in America. In 1773, Britain passed the Tea Act. Many of the colonists saw the act as an attempt to force them to accept the taxes established by the Townshend Acts; the act prompted the Boston Tea Party, where a group of rebels threw an entire shipment of tea sent by the British East India Company into Boston Harbor. The Boston Tea Party was a key event leading up to the revolution, as the British government responded furiously with the Intolerable Acts, demanding compensation for the lost tea from the rebels; this led to the American Revolutionary War. The war began in the area surrounding Boston with the Battles of Concord. Boston itself was besieged for a year during the Siege of Boston, which began on April 19, 1775; the New England militia impeded the movement of the British Army. William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe the commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America, led the British army in the siege.
On June 17, the British captured the Charlestown peninsula in Boston, during the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British army outnumbered the militia stationed there, but it was a Py
Chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific discipline involved with elements and compounds composed of atoms and ions: their composition, properties and the changes they undergo during a reaction with other substances. In the scope of its subject, chemistry occupies an intermediate position between physics and biology, it is sometimes called the central science because it provides a foundation for understanding both basic and applied scientific disciplines at a fundamental level. For example, chemistry explains aspects of plant chemistry, the formation of igneous rocks, how atmospheric ozone is formed and how environmental pollutants are degraded, the properties of the soil on the moon, how medications work, how to collect DNA evidence at a crime scene. Chemistry addresses topics such as how atoms and molecules interact via chemical bonds to form new chemical compounds. There are four types of chemical bonds: covalent bonds, in which compounds share one or more electron; the word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to an earlier set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, philosophy, astronomy and medicine.
It is seen as linked to the quest to turn lead or another common starting material into gold, though in ancient times the study encompassed many of the questions of modern chemistry being defined as the study of the composition of waters, growth, disembodying, drawing the spirits from bodies and bonding the spirits within bodies by the early 4th century Greek-Egyptian alchemist Zosimos. An alchemist was called a'chemist' in popular speech, the suffix "-ry" was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as "chemistry"; the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία; this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, in turn derived from the word Kemet, the ancient name of Egypt in the Egyptian language. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning "cast together"; the current model of atomic structure is the quantum mechanical model. Traditional chemistry starts with the study of elementary particles, molecules, metals and other aggregates of matter.
This matter can be studied in isolation or in combination. The interactions and transformations that are studied in chemistry are the result of interactions between atoms, leading to rearrangements of the chemical bonds which hold atoms together; such behaviors are studied in a chemistry laboratory. The chemistry laboratory stereotypically uses various forms of laboratory glassware; however glassware is not central to chemistry, a great deal of experimental chemistry is done without it. A chemical reaction is a transformation of some substances into one or more different substances; the basis of such a chemical transformation is the rearrangement of electrons in the chemical bonds between atoms. It can be symbolically depicted through a chemical equation, which involves atoms as subjects; the number of atoms on the left and the right in the equation for a chemical transformation is equal. The type of chemical reactions a substance may undergo and the energy changes that may accompany it are constrained by certain basic rules, known as chemical laws.
Energy and entropy considerations are invariably important in all chemical studies. Chemical substances are classified in terms of their structure, phase, as well as their chemical compositions, they can be analyzed using the tools of e.g. spectroscopy and chromatography. Scientists engaged in chemical research are known as chemists. Most chemists specialize in one or more sub-disciplines. Several concepts are essential for the study of chemistry; the particles that make up matter have rest mass as well – not all particles have rest mass, such as the photon. Matter can be a mixture of substances; the atom is the basic unit of chemistry. It consists of a dense core called the atomic nucleus surrounded by a space occupied by an electron cloud; the nucleus is made up of positively charged protons and uncharged neutrons, while the electron cloud consists of negatively charged electrons which orbit the nucleus. In a neutral atom, the negatively charged electrons balance out the positive charge of the protons.
The nucleus is dense. The atom is the smallest entity that can be envisaged to retain the chemical properties of the element, such as electronegativity, ionization potential, preferred oxidation state, coordination number, preferred types of bonds to form. A chemical element is a pure substance, composed of a single type of atom, characterized by its particular number of protons in the nuclei of its atoms, known as the atomic number and represented by the symbol Z; the mass number is the sum of the number of neutrons in a nucleus. Although all the nuclei of all atoms belonging to one element will have the same
Francis Amasa Walker
Francis Amasa Walker was an American economist, journalist, academic administrator, military officer in the Union Army. Walker was born into a prominent Boston family, the son of the economist and politician Amasa Walker, he graduated from Amherst College at the age of 20, he received a commission to join the 15th Massachusetts Infantry and rose through the ranks as an assistant adjutant general. Walker fought in the Peninsula Campaign and was wounded at the Battle of Chancellorsville but subsequently participated in the Bristoe and Richmond-Petersburg Campaigns before being captured by Confederate forces and held at the infamous Libby Prison. In July 1866, he was nominated by President Andrew Johnson and confirmed by the United States Senate for the award of the honorary grade of brevet brigadier general United States Volunteers, to rank from March 13, 1865, when he was age 24. Following the war, Walker served on the editorial staff of the Springfield Republican before using his family and military connections to gain appointment as the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics from 1869 to 1870 and Superintendent of the 1870 census where he published an award-winning Statistical Atlas visualizing the data for the first time.
He joined Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School as a professor of political economy in 1872 and rose to international prominence serving as a chief member of the 1876 Philadelphia Exposition, American representative to the 1878 International Monetary Conference, President of the American Statistical Association in 1882, inaugural President of the American Economic Association in 1886, vice president of the National Academy of Sciences in 1890. Walker led the 1880 census which resulted in a twenty-two volume census, cementing Walker's reputation as the nation's preeminent statistician; as an economist, Walker debunked the wage-fund doctrine and engaged in a prominent scholarly debate with Henry George on land and taxes. Walker argued in support of bimetallism and although he was an opponent of the nascent socialist movement, he argued that obligations existed between the employer and the employed, he published his International Bimetallism at the height of the 1896 presidential election campaign in which economic issues were prominent.
Walker was a prolific writer, authoring ten books on military history. In recognition of his contributions to economic theory, beginning in 1947, the American Economic Association recognized the lifetime achievement of an individual economist with a "Francis A. Walker Medal". Walker accepted the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1881, a position he held for fifteen years until his death. During his tenure, he placed the institution on more stable financial footing by aggressively fund-raising and securing grants from the Massachusetts government, implemented many curricular reforms, oversaw the launch of new academic programs, expanded the size of the Boston campus and student enrollments. MIT's Walker Memorial Hall, a former students' clubhouse and one of the original buildings on the Charles River campus, was dedicated to him in 1916. Walker was born in Boston, the youngest son of Hanna and Amasa Walker, a prominent economist and state politician; the Walkers had three children, Emma and Francis.
Because the Walkers' next-door neighbor was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. the junior Walker and junior Holmes were playmates as young children and renewed their friendship in life. The family remained there; as a boy he had both a noted temper as well as a magnetic personality. Beginning his schooling at the age of seven, Walker studied Latin at various private and public schools in Brookfield before being sent to the Leicester Academy when he was twelve, he completed his college preparation by the time he was fourteen and spent another year studying Greek and Latin under the future suffragist and abolitionist Lucy Stone, entered Amherst College at the age of fifteen. Although he had planned to matriculate at Harvard after his first year at Amherst, Walker's father believed his son was too young to enter the larger college and insisted he remain at Amherst. While he had entered with the class of 1859, Walker became ill during his first year there and fell back a year, he was a member of the Delta Kappa and Athenian societies as a freshman and withdrew from Alpha Sigma Phi as a sophomore on account of "rowdyism", joined Delta Kappa Epsilon.
As a student, Walker was awarded the Sweetser Essay Prize and the Hardy Prize for extemporaneous speaking. He graduated in 1860 as Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in law. After graduation, he joined the law firm of Charles Devens and George Frisbie Hoar in Worcester, Massachusetts; as tensions between the North and South increased over the winter of 1860–1861, Walker equipped himself and began drilling with Major Devens' 3rd Battalion of Rifles in Worcester and New York. Despite his older brother Robert serving in the 34th Massachusetts Infantry, his father objected to his youngest son mobilizing with the first wave of volunteers. Walker returned to Worcester but began to lobby William Schouler and Governor John Andrew to grant him a commission as a second lieutenant under Devens' command of the 15th Massachusetts. Following his 21st birthday and the First Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Walker secured the consent of his father to join the war effort as well as assurances by Devens that he would receive an officer's commission.
However, the lieutenancy never materialized and Devens instead offered Walker an appointment as a sergeant major, which he assumed on August 1, 1861, after re-tailori
Chemical substance
A chemical substance is a form of matter having constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. It cannot be separated into components by physical separation methods, i.e. without breaking chemical bonds. Chemical substances can be chemical compounds, or alloys. Chemical elements may not be included in the definition, depending on expert viewpoint. Chemical substances are called'pure' to set them apart from mixtures. A common example of a chemical substance is pure water. Other chemical substances encountered in pure form are diamond, table salt and refined sugar. However, in practice, no substance is pure, chemical purity is specified according to the intended use of the chemical. Chemical substances exist as solids, gases, or plasma, may change between these phases of matter with changes in temperature or pressure. Chemical substances may be converted to others by means of chemical reactions. Forms of energy, such as light and heat, are not matter, are thus not "substances" in this regard.
A chemical substance may well be defined as "any material with a definite chemical composition" in an introductory general chemistry textbook. According to this definition a chemical substance can either be a pure chemical element or a pure chemical compound. But, there are exceptions to this definition; the chemical substance index published by CAS includes several alloys of uncertain composition. Non-stoichiometric compounds are a special case that violates the law of constant composition, for them, it is sometimes difficult to draw the line between a mixture and a compound, as in the case of palladium hydride. Broader definitions of chemicals or chemical substances can be found, for example: "the term'chemical substance' means any organic or inorganic substance of a particular molecular identity, including – any combination of such substances occurring in whole or in part as a result of a chemical reaction or occurring in nature". In geology, substances of uniform composition are called minerals, while physical mixtures of several minerals are defined as rocks.
Many minerals, mutually dissolve into solid solutions, such that a single rock is a uniform substance despite being a mixture in stoichiometric terms. Feldspars are a common example: anorthoclase is an alkali aluminum silicate, where the alkali metal is interchangeably either sodium or potassium. In law, "chemical substances" may include both pure substances and mixtures with a defined composition or manufacturing process. For example, the EU regulation REACH defines "monoconstituent substances", "multiconstituent substances" and "substances of unknown or variable composition"; the latter two consist of multiple chemical substances. For example, charcoal is an complex polymeric mixture that can be defined by its manufacturing process. Therefore, although the exact chemical identity is unknown, identification can be made to a sufficient accuracy; the CAS index includes mixtures. Polymers always appear as mixtures of molecules of multiple molar masses, each of which could be considered a separate chemical substance.
However, the polymer may be defined by a known precursor or reaction and the molar mass distribution. For example, polyethylene is a mixture of long chains of -CH2- repeating units, is sold in several molar mass distributions, LDPE, MDPE, HDPE and UHMWPE; the concept of a "chemical substance" became established in the late eighteenth century after work by the chemist Joseph Proust on the composition of some pure chemical compounds such as basic copper carbonate. He deduced; this is now known as the law of constant composition. With the advancement of methods for chemical synthesis in the realm of organic chemistry. However, there are some controversies regarding this definition because the large number of chemical substances reported in chemistry literature need to be indexed. Isomerism caused much consternation to early researchers, since isomers have the same composition, but differ in configuration of the atoms. For example, there was much speculation for the chemical identity of benzene, until the correct structure was described by Friedrich August Kekulé.
The idea of stereoisomerism – that atoms have rigid three-dimensional structure and can thus form isomers that differ only in their three-dimensional arrangement – was another crucial step in understanding the concept of distinct chemical substances. For example, tartaric acid has three distinct isomers, a pair of diastereomers with one diastereomer forming two enantiomers. An element is a chemical substance made up of a particular kind of atom and hence cannot be broken down or transformed by a chemical reaction into a different element, though it can be transmuted into another element through a nuclear reaction; this is so, beca
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with symbol As and atomic number 33. Arsenic occurs in many minerals in combination with sulfur and metals, but as a pure elemental crystal. Arsenic is a metalloid, it has various allotropes, but only the gray form, which has a metallic appearance, is important to industry. The primary use of arsenic is in alloys of lead. Arsenic is a common n-type dopant in semiconductor electronic devices, the optoelectronic compound gallium arsenide is the second most used semiconductor after doped silicon. Arsenic and its compounds the trioxide, are used in the production of pesticides, treated wood products and insecticides; these applications are declining due to the toxicity of its compounds. A few species of bacteria are able to use arsenic compounds as respiratory metabolites. Trace quantities of arsenic are an essential dietary element in rats, goats and other species. A role in human metabolism is not known. However, arsenic poisoning occurs in multicellular life. Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a problem.
The United States' Environmental Protection Agency states that all forms of arsenic are a serious risk to human health. The United States' Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ranked arsenic as number 1 in its 2001 Priority List of Hazardous Substances at Superfund sites. Arsenic is classified as a Group-A carcinogen; the three most common arsenic allotropes are gray and black arsenic, with gray being the most common. Gray arsenic adopts a double-layered structure consisting of many interlocked, six-membered rings; because of weak bonding between the layers, gray arsenic is brittle and has a low Mohs hardness of 3.5. Nearest and next-nearest neighbors form a distorted octahedral complex, with the three atoms in the same double-layer being closer than the three atoms in the next; this close packing leads to a high density of 5.73 g/cm3. Gray arsenic becomes a semiconductor with a bandgap of 1.2 -- 1.4 eV if amorphized. Gray arsenic is the most stable form. Yellow arsenic is soft and waxy, somewhat similar to tetraphosphorus.
Both have four atoms arranged in a tetrahedral structure in which each atom is bound to each of the other three atoms by a single bond. This unstable allotrope, being molecular, is the most volatile, least dense, most toxic. Solid yellow arsenic is produced by rapid cooling of arsenic vapor, As4, it is transformed into gray arsenic by light. The yellow form has a density of 1.97 g/cm3. Black arsenic is similar in structure to black phosphorus. Black arsenic can be formed by cooling vapor at around 100–220 °C, it is brittle. It is a poor electrical conductor. Arsenic occurs in nature as a monoisotopic element, composed of 75As; as of 2003, at least 33 radioisotopes have been synthesized, ranging in atomic mass from 60 to 92. The most stable of these is 73As with a half-life of 80.30 days. All other isotopes have half-lives of under one day, with the exception of 71As, 72As, 74As, 76As, 77As. Isotopes that are lighter than the stable 75As tend to decay by β+ decay, those that are heavier tend to decay by β− decay, with some exceptions.
At least 10 nuclear isomers have been described, ranging in atomic mass from 66 to 84. The most stable of arsenic's isomers is 68mAs with a half-life of 111 seconds. Arsenic has a similar electronegativity and ionization energies to its lighter congener phosphorus and as such forms covalent molecules with most of the nonmetals. Though stable in dry air, arsenic forms a golden-bronze tarnish upon exposure to humidity which becomes a black surface layer; when heated in air, arsenic oxidizes to arsenic trioxide. This odor can be detected on striking arsenide minerals such as arsenopyrite with a hammer, it burns in oxygen to form arsenic trioxide and arsenic pentoxide, which have the same structure as the more well-known phosphorus compounds, in fluorine to give arsenic pentafluoride. Arsenic sublimes upon heating at atmospheric pressure, converting directly to a gaseous form without an intervening liquid state at 887 K; the triple point is 3.63 MPa and 1,090 K. Arsenic makes arsenic acid with concentrated nitric acid, arsenous acid with dilute nitric acid, arsenic trioxide with concentrated sulfuric acid.
Arsenic reacts with metals to form arsenides, though these are not ionic compounds containing the As3− ion as the formation of such an anion would be endothermic and the group 1 arsenides have properties of intermetallic compounds. Like germanium and bromine, which like arsenic succeed the 3d transition series, arsenic is much less stable in the group oxidation state of +5 than its vertical neighbors phosphorus and antimony, hence arsenic pentoxide and arsenic acid are potent oxidizers. Compounds of arsenic resemble in some respects those of phosphorus which occupies the same group of the periodic table; the most common oxidation states for arsenic are: −3 in the arsenides, which are alloy-like intermetallic compounds, +3 in the arsenites, +5 in the arsenates and most organoarsenic compounds. Arsenic bonds to itself as seen in the square As3−4 ions in the mineral skutterudite. In the +3 oxidation state, arsenic is pyramidal owing to the i
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private and statutory Ivy League research university in Ithaca, New York. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, the university was intended to teach and make contributions in all fields of knowledge—from the classics to the sciences, from the theoretical to the applied; these ideals, unconventional for the time, are captured in Cornell's founding principle, a popular 1868 Ezra Cornell quotation: "I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study."The university is broadly organized into seven undergraduate colleges and seven graduate divisions at its main Ithaca campus, with each college and division defining its own admission standards and academic programs in near autonomy. The university administers two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and one in Education City and Cornell Tech, a graduate program that incorporates technology and creative thinking; the program moved from Google's Chelsea Building in New York City to its permanent campus on Roosevelt Island in September 2017.
Cornell is one of ten private land grant universities in the United States and the only one in New York. Of its seven undergraduate colleges, three are state-supported statutory or contract colleges through the State University of New York system, including its agricultural and human ecology colleges as well as its industrial labor relations school. Of Cornell's graduate schools, only the veterinary college is state-supported; as a land grant college, Cornell operates a cooperative extension outreach program in every county of New York and receives annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions. The Cornell University Ithaca Campus comprises 745 acres, but is much larger when the Cornell Botanic Gardens and the numerous university-owned lands in New York City are considered; as of October 2018, 58 Nobel laureates, four Turing Award winners and one Fields Medalist have been affiliated with Cornell University. Since its founding, Cornell has been a co-educational, non-sectarian institution where admission has not been restricted by religion or race.
Cornell counts more than 245,000 living alumni, its former and present faculty and alumni include 34 Marshall Scholars, 30 Rhodes Scholars, 29 Truman Scholars, 7 Gates Scholars, 55 Olympic Medalists, 14 living billionaires. The student body consists of more than 14,000 undergraduate and 8,000 graduate students from all 50 American states and 116 countries. Cornell University was founded on April 27, 1865. Senator Ezra Cornell offered his farm in Ithaca, New York, as a site and $500,000 of his personal fortune as an initial endowment. Fellow senator and educator Andrew Dickson White agreed to be the first president. During the next three years, White oversaw the construction of the first two buildings and traveled to attract students and faculty; the university was inaugurated on October 7, 1868, 412 men were enrolled the next day. Cornell developed as a technologically innovative institution, applying its research to its own campus and to outreach efforts. For example, in 1883 it was one of the first university campuses to use electricity from a water-powered dynamo to light the grounds.
Since 1894, Cornell fulfill statutory requirements. Cornell has had active alumni since its earliest classes, it was one of the first universities to include alumni-elected representatives on its Board of Trustees. Cornell was among the Ivies that had heightened student activism during the 1960s related to cultural issues, civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War. Today the university has more than 4,000 courses. Cornell is known for the Residential Club Fire of 1967, a fire in the Residential Club building that killed eight students and one professor. Since 2000, Cornell has been expanding its international programs. In 2004, the university opened the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, it has partnerships with institutions in India and the People's Republic of China. Former president Jeffrey S. Lehman described the university, with its high international profile, a "transnational university". On March 9, 2004, Cornell and Stanford University laid the cornerstone for a new'Bridging the Rift Center' to be built and jointly operated for education on the Israel–Jordan border.
Cornell's main campus is on East Hill in Ithaca, New York, overlooking Cayuga Lake. Since the university was founded, it has expanded to about 2,300 acres, encompassing both the hill and much of the surrounding areas. Central Campus has laboratories, administrative buildings, all of the campus' academic buildings, athletic facilities and museums. North Campus is composed of ten residence halls that house first-year students, although the Townhouse Community houses transfer students; the five main residence halls on West Campus make up the West Campus House System, along with several Gothic-style buildings, referred to as "the Gothics". Collegetown contains two upper-level residence halls and the Schwartz Performing Arts Center amid a mixed-use neighborhood of apartments and businesses; the main campus is marked by an irregular layout and eclectic architectural styles, including ornate Collegiate Gothic and Neoclassical buildings, the more spare international and modernist structures. The more ornat
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.; Peck, H. T.; Colby, F. M., eds. (1905). "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia (1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the 