Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. It was founded in 1636 and named Harvard College in 1639 in honor of its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, and it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The Massachusetts General Court founded and authorized it, and the Constitution of Massachusetts referred to it as a university in 1780. Today it has ten academic faculties and a faculty attached to the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and three campuses: the main campus in Cambridge centered on Harvard Yard, a campus across the Charles River in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, and the medical campus in Boston's Longwood Medical Area. Harvard Library holds more than 20 million volumes and is the world's largest academic library.