1.
James L. Brooks
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James Lawrence Jim Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life, after dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the CBS News broadcasts. He moved to Los Angeles in 1965 to work on David L. Wolpers documentaries, after being laid off he met producer Allan Burns who secured him a job as a writer on the series My Mother the Car. Brooks wrote for several shows before being hired as an editor on My Friend Tony. Grant Tinker hired Brooks and Burns at MTM Productions to create The Mary Tyler Moore Show in 1970, the show, one of the first to feature an independent working woman as its lead character, was critically acclaimed and won Brooks several Primetime Emmy Awards. Brooks and Burns then created two successful spin-offs from Mary Tyler Moore in the shape of Rhoda and Lou Grant, Brooks left MTM Productions in 1978 to co-create the sitcom Taxi which, despite winning multiple Emmys, suffered from low ratings and was canceled twice. Brooks moved into film work when he wrote and co-produced the 1979 film Starting Over. His next project was the acclaimed film Terms of Endearment. Basing his next film, Broadcast News, on his journalistic experiences, although his 1994 work Ill Do Anything was hampered by negative press attention due to the cutting of all of its recorded musical numbers, As Good as It Gets earned further praise. It was seven years until his film, 2004s Spanglish. His sixth film, How Do You Know, was released in 2010, Brooks also produced and mentored Cameron Crowe on Say Anything. And Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson on Bottle Rocket, in 1984, Brooks founded the television and film company, Gracie Films. Although he did not intend to do so, Brooks returned to television in 1987 as the producer of The Tracey Ullman Show and he hired cartoonist Matt Groening to create a series of shorts for the show, which eventually led to The Simpsons in 1989. The Simpsons won numerous awards and is still running, Brooks also co-produced and co-wrote the 2007 film adaptation of the show, The Simpsons Movie. In total, Brooks has received 47 Emmy nominations, winning 20 of them, Brooks was born James Lawrence Brooks on May 9,1940 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey. His parents, Dorothy Helen and Edward M. Brooks, were both salespeople, the Brooks family was Jewish, Edward Brooks changed his surname from Bernstein and claimed to be Irish. Brooks father abandoned his mother when he found out she was pregnant with him, during the pregnancy, Brooks father sent his wife a postcard stating that If its a boy, name him Jim. His mother died when he was 22 and he has an older sister, Diane, who helped look after him as a child and to whom he dedicated As Good As It Gets
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Shirley MacLaine
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Shirley MacLaine is an American film, television and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author. She is known for her New Age beliefs, and has an interest in spirituality and she has written a series of autobiographical works that describe these beliefs, document her world travels, and describe her Hollywood career. She has also won five competitive Golden Globe Awards and received the Golden Globe Cecil B, deMille Award at the 1998 ceremony. Named after Shirley Temple, Shirley MacLean Beaty was born in Richmond, MacLaines younger brother is the actor, writer and director Warren Beatty, he changed the spelling of his surname when he became an actor. Their parents raised them as Baptists and her uncle was A. A. MacLeod, a Communist member of the Ontario legislature in the 1940s. MacLaine played baseball in a team, holding the record for most home runs which earned her the nickname Powerhouse. During the 1950s, the family resided in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington. As a toddler she had weak ankles and would fall over with the slightest misstep and this was the beginning of her interest in performing. Strongly motivated by ballet, she never missed a class, in classical romantic pieces like Romeo and Juliet and The Sleeping Beauty, she always played the boys roles due to being the tallest in the group and the absence of males in the class. Ultimately she decided against making a career of professional ballet because she had grown too tall and was unable to acquire perfect technique and she explained that she didnt have the ideal body type, lacking the requisite beautifully constructed feet of high arches, high insteps and a flexible ankle. Also slowly realizing ballets propensity to be too all-consuming, and ultimately limiting, she moved on to forms of dancing, acting. She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad, the summer before her senior year, she went to New York City to try acting on Broadway, and had some success. After she graduated, she returned and within a year became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game, Haney broke her ankle, a few months after, with Haney still injured, film producer Hal B. Wallis saw MacLaines performance, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures and she later sued Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that has been credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management. MacLaine made her debut in Alfred Hitchcocks The Trouble with Harry. This was quickly followed by her role in the Martin and Lewis film Artists, soon afterwards, she had a role in Around the World in 80 Days. This was followed by Hot Spell and a role in Some Came Running, for the latter film she gained her first Academy Award nomination. Her second Oscar nomination came two years later for The Apartment, starring with Jack Lemmon, the film won five Oscars, including Best Director for Billy Wilder
3.
Jack Nicholson
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John Joseph Jack Nicholson is an American actor and filmmaker, who has performed for over 60 years. Nicholson is known for playing a range of starring or supporting roles, including satirical comedy, romance and dark portrayals of antiheroes. In many of his films, he has played the eternal outsider, Nicholsons 12 Academy Award nominations make him the most nominated male actor in the Academys history. Nicholson has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice, one for the drama One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and he also won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the comedy-drama Terms of Endearment. Nicholson is one of three actors to win three Academy Awards. Nicholson is one of two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s. He has won six Golden Globe Awards, and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2001, in 1994, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institutes Life Achievement Award. He played Jack Torrance in Stanley Kubricks horror film The Shining, the Joker in Tim Burtons superhero film Batman, other films include the legal drama A Few Good Men, the Sean Penn-directed mystery film The Pledge, and the comedy-drama About Schmidt. Nicholson was born on April 22,1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey, Nicholsons mother was of Irish, English, and German descent. She married Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo in 1936, before realizing that he was already married, biographer Patrick McGilligan stated in his book Jacks Life that Latvian-born Eddie King, Junes manager, may have been Nicholsons biological father, rather than Furcillo. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of who the father was, in 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Nicholson, that his sister, June, was actually his mother, and his other sister, Lorraine, was really his aunt. By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died, on finding out, Nicholson said it was a pretty dramatic event, but it wasnt what Id call traumatizing. I was pretty well psychologically formed. Nicholson grew up in Neptune City, New Jersey and he was raised in his mothers Roman Catholic religion. Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, nick, as he was known to his high school friends, attended nearby Manasquan High School, where he was voted class clown by the Class of 1954. He was in every day for a whole school year. A theatre and an award at the school are named in his honor. In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50-year high school reunion accompanied by his aunt Lorraine and he served a tour of duty in the Air National Guard. Nicholson first came to Hollywood in 1954, when he was 17 and he took a job as an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio
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Danny DeVito
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Daniel Michael Danny DeVito, Jr. is an American actor, comedian, director and producer. He gained prominence for his portrayal of the taxi dispatcher Louie De Palma in Taxi which won him a Golden Globe, confidential and for his voiceover in such films as Space Jam, Hercules and The Lorax. DeVito and Michael Shamberg founded Jersey Films, soon afterwards, Stacey Sher became an equal partner. The production company is known for such as Pulp Fiction, Garden State. DeVito also owns Jersey Television, which produced the Comedy Central series Reno 911, DeVito and wife Rhea Perlman starred together in his 1996 film Matilda, based on Roald Dahls childrens novel. DeVito was also one of the producers nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture for Erin Brockovich and he currently stars as Frank Reynolds on the FX and FXX sitcom Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He directs, produces and appears in graphic, short, horror films for his Internet venture The Blood Factory, deVitos short stature is the result of multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, a rare genetic disorder that affects bone growth in those afflicted. DeVito was born in Neptune Township, New Jersey, the son of Daniel DeVito, Sr. a small business owner and he grew up in a family of five, with his parents and two older sisters. He is of Italian descent, his family is originally from San Fele and he was raised in Asbury Park, New Jersey. DeVito was raised as a Catholic and attended Oratory Preparatory School and he went to the boarding school when he was 14 after he persuaded his father to send him there to keep him out of trouble. After leaving the school, he trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. DeVito played Martini in the 1975 film One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and he gained fame in 1978 playing Louie De Palma, the short but domineering dispatcher for the fictional Sunshine Cab Company, on the hit TV show Taxi. Two years later, DeVito reunited with Douglas and Turner in The War of the Roses, DeVito has an interest in documentaries, In 2006, he began a partnership with Morgan Freemans company ClickStar, on which he hosts a documentary channel called Jersey Docs. He was also interviewed in the documentary Revenge of the Electric Car, about his interest in, in April 2012, DeVito made his West End acting debut in a revival of the Neil Simon play The Sunshine Boys as Willie Clark - alongside Richard Griffiths. The play previewed at the Savoy Theatre in London from 27 April 2012, opened on 17 May, DeVito is currently making his Broadway debut in a Roundabout Theatre Company revival of the Arthur Miller play The Price as Gregory Solomon. The production began performances at the American Airlines Theatre on February 16,2017 and is set to open on March 16 for a limited run through May 7. DeVito has become a film and television producer. Through Jersey Films, he has produced films, including Pulp Fiction, Get Shorty, Erin Brockovich, Gattaca
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Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film studio based in Hollywood, California, that has been a subsidiary of the American media conglomerate Viacom since 1994. In 1916, film producer Adolph Zukor contracted 22 actors and actresses and these fortunate few would become the first movie stars. Paramount Pictures is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America, in 2014, Paramount Pictures became the first major Hollywood studio to distribute all of its films in digital form only. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving studio in the world after the French studios Gaumont Film Company and Pathé, followed by the Nordisk Film company. It is the last major film studio headquartered in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. Paramount Pictures dates its existence from the 1912 founding date of the Famous Players Film Company, hungarian-born founder, Adolph Zukor, who had been an early investor in nickelodeons, saw that movies appealed mainly to working-class immigrants. With partners Daniel Frohman and Charles Frohman he planned to offer feature-length films that would appeal to the class by featuring the leading theatrical players of the time. By mid-1913, Famous Players had completed five films, and Zukor was on his way to success and its first film was Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth, which starred Sarah Bernhardt. That same year, another aspiring producer, Jesse L. Lasky, opened his Lasky Feature Play Company with money borrowed from his brother-in-law, Samuel Goldfish, the Lasky company hired as their first employee a stage director with virtually no film experience, Cecil B. DeMille, who would find a site in Hollywood, near Los Angeles, for his first feature film. Hodkinson and actor, director, producer Hobart Bosworth had started production of a series of Jack London movies, Paramount was the first successful nationwide distributor, until this time, films were sold on a statewide or regional basis which had proved costly to film producers. Also, Famous Players and Lasky were privately owned while Paramount was a corporation, in 1916, Zukor maneuvered a three-way merger of his Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount. Zukor and Lasky bought Hodkinson out of Paramount, and merged the three companies into one, with only the exhibitor-owned First National as a rival, Famous Players-Lasky and its Paramount Pictures soon dominated the business. It was this system that gave Paramount a leading position in the 1920s and 1930s, the driving force behind Paramounts rise was Zukor. In 1926, Zukor hired independent producer B. P. Schulberg and they purchased the Robert Brunton Studios, a 26-acre facility at 5451 Marathon Street for US$1 million. In 1927, Famous Players-Lasky took the name Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, three years later, because of the importance of the Publix Theatres, it became Paramount Publix Corporation. In 1928, Paramount began releasing Inkwell Imps, animated cartoons produced by Max, the Fleischers, veterans in the animation industry, were among the few animation producers capable of challenging the prominence of Walt Disney. The Paramount newsreel series Paramount News ran from 1927 to 1957, Paramount was also one of the first Hollywood studios to release what were known at that time as talkies, and in 1929, released their first musical, Innocents of Paris
6.
Academy Awards
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The various category winners are awarded a copy of a golden statuette, officially called the Academy Award of Merit, which has become commonly known by its nickname Oscar. The awards, first presented in 1929 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, are overseen by AMPAS, the awards ceremony was first broadcast on radio in 1930 and televised for the first time in 1953. It is now live in more than 200 countries and can be streamed live online. The Academy Awards ceremony is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony and its equivalents – the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music and recording – are modeled after the Academy Awards. The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2016, were held on February 26,2017, at the Dolby Theatre, in Los Angeles, the ceremony was hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and was broadcast on ABC. A total of 3,048 Oscars have been awarded from the inception of the award through the 88th, the first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16,1929, at a private dinner function at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel, the cost of guest tickets for that nights ceremony was $5. Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors and other participants in the industry of the time. The ceremony ran for 15 minutes, winners were announced to media three months earlier, however, that was changed for the second ceremony in 1930. Since then, for the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11,00 pm on the night of the awards. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in The Last Command and he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, so the Academy agreed to give him the prize earlier, this made him the first Academy Award winner in history. With the fourth ceremony, however, the system changed, for the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned two calendar years. At the 29th ceremony, held on March 27,1957, until then, foreign-language films had been honored with the Special Achievement Award. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies always end with the Academy Award for Best Picture. The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting, see also § Awards of Merit categories The best known award is the Academy Award of Merit, more popularly known as the Oscar statuette. The five spokes represent the branches of the Academy, Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers. The model for the statuette is said to be Mexican actor Emilio El Indio Fernández, sculptor George Stanley sculpted Cedric Gibbons design. The statuettes presented at the ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze
7.
Academy Award for Best Director
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The Academy Award for Best Director is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of a director who has exhibited outstanding directing while working in the film industry. However, these categories were merged for all subsequent ceremonies, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the directors branch of AMPAS, winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. For the first eleven years of the Academy Awards, directors were allowed to be nominated for multiple films in the same year, the Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Picture have been very closely linked throughout their history. Of the 89 films that have been awarded Best Picture,63 have also been awarded Best Director, since its inception, the award has been given to 69 directors or directing teams. John Ford has received the most awards in this category with four, william Wyler was nominated on twelve occasions, more than any other individual. As of the 2017 ceremony, Damien Chazelle is the most recent winner in category for his work on La La Land. Chazelle also became the youngest director in history to receive this award, two directing teams have shared the award, Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins for West Side Story in 1961 and Joel and Ethan Coen for No Country for Old Men in 2007. The Coen brothers are the siblings to have won the award. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933. Since the 7th ceremony held in 1935, the period of eligibility became the full calendar year from January 1 to December 31. org The Academy Awards Database Oscar. com
8.
Academy Award for Best Actress
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The Academy Award for Best Actress is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actress who has delivered a performance in a leading role while working within the film industry. The 1st Academy Awards ceremony was held in 1929 with Janet Gaynor receiving the award for her roles in 7th Heaven, Street Angel, and Sunrise. Currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the branch of AMPAS. In the first three years of the awards, actresses were nominated as the best in their categories, at that time, all of their work during the qualifying period was listed after the award. The following year, this unwieldy and confusing system was replaced by the current system in which an actress is nominated for a performance in a single film. Starting with the 9th ceremony held in 1937, the category was officially limited to five nominations per year, one actress has been nominated posthumously, Jeanne Eagels. Only three film characters have been nominated more than once in this category, elizabeth I of England, Leslie Crosbie in The Letter, and Esther Blodgett in A Star is Born. Six women on the list have received an Honorary Academy Award for their acting, they are Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Pickford, Deborah Kerr, Gena Rowlands, since its inception, the award has been given to 74 actresses. Katharine Hepburn has won the most awards in this category, with four Oscars, meryl Streep, who has a total of 20 Oscar nominations, has been nominated in this category on 16 occasions, resulting in two awards. As of the 2017 ceremony, Emma Stone is the most recent winner in category for her role as Mia Dolan in La La Land. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. For the first five ceremonies, the eligibility period spanned twelve months from August 1 to July 31, for the 6th ceremony held in 1934, the eligibility period lasted from August 1,1932 to December 31,1933
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Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
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The Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor is an award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. It is given in honor of an actor who has delivered a performance in a supporting role while working within the film industry. At the 9th Academy Awards ceremony held in 1937, Walter Brennan was the first winner of award for his role in Come. Initially, winners in both supporting acting categories were awarded instead of statuettes. Beginning with the 16th ceremony held in 1944, however, winners received full-sized statuettes, currently, nominees are determined by single transferable vote within the actors branch of AMPAS, winners are selected by a plurality vote from the entire eligible voting members of the Academy. Since its inception, the award has given to 72 actors. Brennan has received the most awards in this category with three awards, Brennan, Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Arthur Kennedy, Jack Nicholson, and Claude Rains were nominated on four occasions, more than any other actor. As of the 2017 ceremony, Mahershala Ali is the most recent winner in category for his role as Juan in Moonlight. In the following table, the years are listed as per Academy convention, and generally correspond to the year of release in Los Angeles County. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 978-1-55002-574-3. org The Academy Awards Database Oscar. com Complete Downloadable List of Academy Award Nominees
10.
Astronaut
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An astronaut or cosmonaut is a person trained by a human spaceflight program to command, pilot, or serve as a crew member of a spacecraft. Although generally reserved for professional space travelers, the terms are applied to anyone who travels into space, including scientists, politicians, journalists. Starting in the 1950s up to 2002, astronauts were sponsored and trained exclusively by governments, with the suborbital flight of the privately funded SpaceShipOne in 2004, a new category of astronaut was created, the commercial astronaut. The criteria for what constitutes human spaceflight vary, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale Sporting Code for astronautics recognizes only flights that exceed an altitude of 100 kilometers. In the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 50 miles are awarded astronaut wings. As of 17 November 2016, a total of 552 people from 36 countries have reached 100 km or more in altitude, of which 549 reached low Earth orbit or beyond. Of these,24 people have traveled beyond Low Earth orbit, to either lunar or trans-lunar orbit or to the surface of the moon, the three astronauts who have not reached low Earth orbit are spaceplane pilots Joe Walker, Mike Melvill, and Brian Binnie. As of 17 November 2016, under the U. S. definition 558 people qualify as having reached space, of eight X-15 pilots who exceeded 50 miles in altitude, only one exceeded 100 kilometers. Space travelers have spent over 41,790 man-days in space, as of 2016, the man with the longest cumulative time in space is Gennady Padalka, who has spent 879 days in space. Peggy A. Whitson holds the record for the most time in space by a woman,377 days, dryden preferred cosmonaut, on the grounds that flights would occur in the cosmos, while the astro prefix suggested flight to the stars. Most NASA Space Task Group members preferred astronaut, which survived by common usage as the preferred American term, when the Soviet Union launched the first man into space, Yuri Gagarin in 1961, they chose a term which anglicizes to cosmonaut. In English-speaking nations, a space traveler is called an astronaut. The term derives from the Greek words ástron, meaning star, the first known use of the term astronaut in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his short story The Deaths Head Meteor in 1930. The word itself had been known earlier, for example, in Percy Gregs 1880 book Across the Zodiac, astronaut referred to a spacecraft. In Les Navigateurs de lInfini of J. -H, rosny aîné, the word astronautique was used. The word may have inspired by aeronaut, an older term for an air traveler first applied to balloonists. An early use in a publication is Eric Frank Russells poem The Astronaut in the November 1934 Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. NASA applies the term astronaut to any crew member aboard NASA spacecraft bound for Earth orbit or beyond, NASA also uses the term as a title for those selected to join its Astronaut Corps
11.
Burt Reynolds
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Burton Leon Burt Reynolds is an American actor, director and producer. He has starred in films, such as Deliverance, The Longest Yard, Smokey. Reynolds is the son of Fern H. and Burton Milo Reynolds and he has English, Scottish, Scots-Irish and Dutch ancestry, and is also said to have Cherokee roots. In his 2014 book, But Enough About Me, Reynolds said his mother had Italian ancestry, during his career, Reynolds often claimed to have been born in Waycross, Georgia, but confirmed in 2015 that he was born in Lansing, Michigan. He was born on February 11,1936, and in his autobiography stated that Lansing is where his family lived when his father was drafted into the United States Army. Reynolds, his mother and sister joined his father at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, when Reynolds father was sent to Europe, the family moved to Lake City, Michigan, where his mother had been raised. In 1946, the moved to Riviera Beach, Florida. His father became Chief of Police of Riviera Beach, which is adjacent to the north of West Palm Beach, during 10th grade at Palm Beach High School, Reynolds was named First Team All State and All Southern as a fullback, and received multiple scholarship offers. After graduating from Palm Beach High in West Palm Beach, he attended Florida State University on a football scholarship, while at Florida State, Reynolds became roommates with now notable college football broadcaster and analyst Lee Corso, and also became a brother of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity. Ending his university career, Reynolds became a police officer. To keep up with his studies, he began taking classes at Palm Beach Junior College in neighboring Lake Worth, in his first term at PBJC, Reynolds was in an English class taught by Watson B. Duncan III. Duncan pushed Reynolds into trying out for a play he was producing and he cast Reynolds in the lead role based on having heard Reynolds read Shakespeare in class, leading to Reynolds winning the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance. In his autobiography, Reynolds refers to Duncan as his mentor, the Florida State Drama Award included a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse, a summer stock theater, in Hyde Park, New York. Reynolds saw the opportunity as an alternative to more physically-demanding summer jobs. While working there, Reynolds met Joanne Woodward, who helped him find an agent, after his Broadway debut Look, Weve Come Through, he received favorable reviews for his performance and went on tour with the cast, driving the bus and appearing on stage. After the tour, Reynolds returned to New York and enrolled in acting classes and his classmates included Frank Gifford, Carol Lawrence, Red Buttons, and Jan Murray. After the play closed, the director, John Forsythe, arranged an audition with Joshua Logan for Reynolds. Reynolds was told that he could not be in the film because he looked too much like Marlon Brando, Logan advised Reynolds to go to Hollywood, but Reynolds did not feel confident enough to do so
12.
Rice University
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William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University or Rice, is a private research university located on a 295-acre campus in Houston, Texas, United States. The university is situated near the Houston Museum District and is adjacent to the Texas Medical Center, Rice is generally considered the top university and the most selective institute of higher education in the state of Texas. Opened in 1912 after the murder of its namesake William Marsh Rice, Rice is now a university with an undergraduate focus. Its emphasis on education is demonstrated by a student body and 6,1 student-faculty ratio. The university has a high level of research activity for its size. Rice is noted for its science programs in the fields of artificial heart research, structural chemical analysis, signal processing, space science. It was ranked first in the world in materials science research by the Times Higher Education in 2010, Rice is a member of the Association of American Universities. Graduate programs are offered through the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, School of Architecture, Shepherd School of Music, Rice students are bound by the strict Honor Code, which is enforced by a student-run Honor Council. Rice competes in 14 NCAA Division I varsity sports and is a part of Conference USA, intramural and club sports are offered in a wide variety of activities such as jiu jitsu, water polo, and crew. In 1891, Rice decided to charter a free-tuition educational institute in Houston, bearing his name, to be created upon his death, Rices will specified the institution was to be a competitive institution of the highest grade and that only white students would be permitted to attend. On the morning of September 23,1900, Rice, age 84, was dead by his valet. Shortly thereafter, a large check made out to Rices New York City lawyer. The lawyer, Albert T. Patrick, then announced that Rice had changed his will to leave the bulk of his fortune to Patrick, rather than to the creation of Rices educational institute. Rices friend and personal lawyer in Houston, James A. Baker, Jones was not prosecuted since he cooperated with the district attorney, and testified against Patrick. Patrick was found guilty of conspiring to steal Rices fortune and convicted of murder in 1901, Baker helped Rices estate direct the fortune, worth $4.6 million in 1904, towards the founding of what was to be called the Rice Institute. The board took control of the assets on April 29 of that year and he came recommended by Princetons president, Woodrow Wilson. In 1908, Lovett accepted the challenge, and was inaugurated as the Institutes first president on October 12,1912. Lovett undertook extensive research before formalizing plans for the new Institute, Lovett called for the establishment of a university of the highest grade, an institution of liberal and technical learning devoted quite as much to investigation as to instruction
