Image name	Stanford University seal.svg
Name	Stanford University
Native name	Leland Stanford Junior University
Motto	(German)
Mottoeng	The wind of freedom blows
Established	1891
Type	Private
Calendar	Quarter
President	John L. Hennessy
Provost	John Etchemendy
City	Stanford
State	California
Country	United States
Endowment	US $13.8 billion
Faculty	1,910
Students	15,319
Undergrad	6,878
Postgrad	8,441
Campus	Suburban,
Colors	Cardinal red and white
Mascot	Stanford Tree (unofficial)
Athletics	NCAA Division I (FBS) Pac-12
Free label	Athletic nickname
Free	Cardinal
Website	Stanford.edu
Logo	}}

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San Jose and southeast of San Francisco.

Leland Stanford, a Californian railroad tycoon and politician, founded the university in 1891 in honor of his son, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid two months before his 16th birthday. The university was established as a coeducational and nondenominational institution, but struggled financially after the senior Stanford's 1893 death and after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would become known as Silicon Valley. By 1970, Stanford was home to a linear accelerator, was one of the original four ARPANET nodes, and had transformed itself into a major research university in computer science, mathematics, natural sciences, and social sciences. More than 50 Stanford faculty, staff, and alumni have won the Nobel Prize and Stanford has the largest number of Turing award winners for a single institution. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded many prominent technology companies including Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn, Netscape Communications, Rambus, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Varian Associates, and Yahoo!.

The university is organized into seven schools including academic schools of Humanities and Sciences and Earth Sciences as well as professional schools of Business, Education, Engineering, Law, and Medicine. Stanford has a student body of approximately 6,900 undergraduate and 8,400 graduate students. Stanford is a founding member of the Association of American Universities and in 2010 managed US$1.15 billion in research funding and $13.8 billion in endowment support, with $21.4 billion in consolidated net assets.

Stanford competes in 34 varsity sports and is one of two private universities in the NCAA Division I-A Pacific-12 Conference. Stanford's athletic program has won the NACDA Directors' Cup every year since 1995. In the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, Stanford athletes won 25 medals, including 8 gold medals, more than any other university in the United States.

History

Origins

Stanford was founded by Leland Stanford, a railroad magnate, United States Senator, and former California Governor, and his wife, Jane Stanford. It is named in honor of their only child, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died in 1884 just before his 16th birthday. His parents decided to dedicate a university to their only son, and Leland Stanford told his wife, "The children of California shall be our children."

Senator and Mrs. Stanford visited Harvard's President Eliot and asked how much it would cost to duplicate Harvard in California. Eliot replied that he supposed $15 million would be enough. David Starr Jordan, the president of Indiana University, was their eventual choice to direct Stanford, after several leaders of the Ivy League turned them down. Locals and members of the university community are known to refer to the school as The Farm, a nod to the fact that the university is located on the former site of Leland Stanford's horse farm.

The motto of Stanford University, selected by President Jordan, is "''Die Luft der Freiheit weht.''" Translated from the German, this quotation from Ulrich von Hutten means "The wind of freedom blows." The motto was controversial during World War I, when anything in German was suspect; at that time the university disavowed that this motto was official.

The university's founding Grant of Endowment from the Stanfords came in November, 1885. Besides defining the operational structure of the University, it made several specific stipulations: "The Trustees ... shall have the power and it shall be their duty:

To establish and maintain at such University an educational system, which will, if followed, fit the graduate for some useful pursuit, and to this end to cause the pupils, as easily as may be, to declare the particular calling, which, in life, they may desire to pursue; ...

To prohibit sectarian instruction, but to have taught in the University the immortality of the soul, the existence of an all-wise and benevolent Creator, and that obedience to His laws is the highest duty of man.

To have taught in the University the right and advantages of association and co-operation.

To afford equal facilities and give equal advantages in the University to both sexes.

To maintain on the Palo Alto estate a farm for instruction in agriculture in all its branches."

The original 'inner quad' buildings (1887–91) were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Francis A. Walker, Charles Allerton Coolidge, and Leland Stanford himself. After six years of planning and building, the university officially opened on October 1, 1891, to 559 students and 15 faculty members, seven of them from Cornell. Tuition was free until the 1930s. Herbert Hoover and his future wife Lou Hoover were in the first class; the Hoovers maintained close lifetime ties to the school.

Coeducation

The school was established as a coeducational institution. However, Jane Stanford soon put a policy in place limiting female enrollment to 500 students because of the large number of women students enrolling. She did not want the school to become "the Vassar of the West" because she felt that would not be an appropriate memorial for her son. In 1933 the policy was modified to specify an undergraduate male:female ratio of 3:1. The "Stanford ratio" of 3:1 remained in place until the early 1960s. By the late 1960s the "ratio" was about 2:1 for undergraduates, but much more skewed at the graduate level, except in the humanities. As of 2005, undergraduate enrollment is split nearly evenly between the sexes, but males outnumber females about 2:1 at the graduate level.

Early finances

When Senator Stanford died in 1893, the continued existence of the university was in jeopardy. A $15 million government lawsuit against Senator Stanford's estate, combined with the Panic of 1893, made it extremely difficult to meet expenses. Most of the Board of Trustees advised a temporary closing until finances could be sorted out. However, Jane Stanford insisted that the university remain in operation. Faced with the possibility of financial ruin for the University she took charge of financial, administrative, and development matters at the university 1893-1905; from her experience as a mother and housewife, she ran the institution as a household. For the next several years, she paid salaries out of her personal resources, even pawning her jewelry to keep the university going. When the lawsuit was finally dropped in 1895, a university holiday was declared.

Stanford alumnus George E. Crothers became a close adviser to Jane Stanford following his graduation from Stanford's law school in 1896. Working with his brother Thomas (also a Stanford graduate and a lawyer), Crothers identified and corrected numerous major legal defects in the terms of the university's founding grant and successfully lobbied for an amendment to the California state constitution granting Stanford an exemption from taxation on its educational property—a change which allowed Jane Stanford to donate her stock holdings to the university.

Edward Alsworth Ross gained fame as a founding father of American sociology; in 1900 Jane Stanford fired him for radicalism and racism, unleashing a major academic freedom case.

Jane Stanford's actions were sometimes eccentric. In 1897, she directed the board of trustees "that the students be taught that everyone born on earth has a soul germ, and that on its development depends much in life here and everything in Life Eternal". She forbade students from sketching nude models in life-drawing class, banned automobiles from campus, and did not allow a hospital to be constructed so that people would not form an impression that Stanford was unhealthy. Between 1899 and 1905, she spent $3 million on a grand construction scheme building lavish memorials to the Stanford family, while university faculty and self-supporting students were living in poverty.

20th century

The 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed parts of the Main Quad (including the original iteration of Memorial Church) as well as the gate that first marked the entrance of the school; rebuilding on a somewhat less grandiose scale began immediately.

Football

From 1906 to 1919, in response to the crisis caused by numerous injuries, intercollegiate football was in jeopardy. While some colleges dropped football entirely, a few, such as the University of California and Stanford University, replaced it with English rugby. From 1906 to 1914, the two schools played rugby as their major sport, but they soon found that the objectionable practices they saw in football were introduced into rugby. Finally, when the football rules were changed, a move developed to return to football, reviving intercollegiate sports and enabling students and alumni to identify with football, an American sport.

Hoover Institution

The Hoover Institution (full name: the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace) at Stanford was set up by Herbert C. Hoover, one of Stanford's first graduates. He had been in charge of American relief efforts in Europe after World War I before his election as president of the United States in 1928. Hoover's express purpose was to collect the records of contemporary history as it was happening. Hoover's helpers frequently risked their lives to rescue documentary and rare printed material, especially from countries under Nazi or Communist rule. Their many successes included the papers of Rosa Luxemburg, the Goebbels diaries, and the records of the Russian secret police in Paris. Research institutes were also set up under Hoover's influence, though inevitably there were to be clashes between the moving force, Hoover, and the host university. In 1960, W. Glenn Campbell was appointed director and substantial budget increases soon led to corresponding increases in acquisitions and related research projects. Despite student unrest in the 1960s, the institution continued to thrive and develop closer relations with Stanford. In particular, the Chinese and Russian collections grew considerably. The Institute increasingly became a conservative think tank, with ties to Washington, especially since 1980. It continues as an integral component of the University.

Post 1945

Biology

The biological sciences department evolved rapidly from 1946 to 1972 as its research focus changed, due to the Cold War and other historically significant conditions external to academia. Stanford science went through three phases of experimental direction during that time. In the early 1950s the department remained fixed in the classical independent and self-directed research mode, shunning interdisciplinary collaboration and excessive government funding. Between the 1950s and mid-1960s biological research shifted focus to the molecular level. Then, from the late 1960s onward, Stanford's goal became applying research and findings toward humanistic ends. Each phase was preempted by larger social issues, such as the escalation of the Cold War, the launch of Sputnik, and public concern over medical abuses.

High tech

A powerful sense of regional solidarity accompanied the rise of Silicon Valley. From the 1890s, the university's leaders saw its mission as service to the West and shaped the school accordingly. At the same time, the perceived exploitation of the West at the hands of eastern interests fueled booster-like attempts to build self-sufficient indigenous local industry. Thus, regionalism helped align Stanford's interests with those of the area's high-tech firms for the first fifty years of Silicon Valley's development. The distinctive regional ethos of the West during the first half of the 20th century is an ingredient of Silicon Valley's already prepared environment, an ingredient that would-be replicators ignore at their peril.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Frederick Terman, as dean of engineering and provost, encouraged faculty and graduates to start their own companies. He is credited with nurturing Hewlett-Packard, Varian Associates, and other high-tech firms, until what would become Silicon Valley grew up around the Stanford campus. Terman is often called "the father of Silicon Valley." Terman encouraged William B. Shockley, co-inventor of the transistor, to return to his hometown of Palo Alto. In 1956 he established the Shockley Transistor Laboratory.

Physics

In 1962-70 negotiations took place between the Cambridge Electron Accelerator Laboratory (shared by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, and the US Atomic Energy Commission over the proposed 1970 construction of the Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring (SPEAR). It would be the first US electron-positron colliding beam storage ring. Paris (2001) explores the competition and cooperation between the two university laboratories and presents diagrams of the proposed facilities, charts detailing location factors, and the parameters of different project proposals between 1967 and 1970. Several rings were built in Europe during the five years that it took to obtain funding for the project, but the extensive project revisions resulted in a superior design that was quickly constructed and paved the way for Nobel Prizes in 1976 for Burton Richter and in 1995 for Martin Perl. During 1955-85, solid state technology research and development at Stanford University followed three waves of industrial innovation made possible by support from private corporations, mainly Bell Telephone Laboratories, Shockley Semiconductor, Fairchild Semiconductor, and Xerox PARC. In 1969 the Stanford Research Institute operated one of the four original nodes that comprised ARPANET, predecessor to the Internet.

Campus

Stanford University is located on an campus on the San Francisco Peninsula, in the northwest part of the Santa Clara Valley (Silicon Valley) approximately southeast of San Francisco and approximately northwest of San Jose. The main campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, and Sand Hill Road. The university also operates the several remote locations (see below).

Stanford's main campus is actually its own census-designated place within unincorporated Santa Clara County, although some of the university land (including the Stanford Shopping Center and the Stanford Research Park) is within the city limits of Palo Alto. The campus also includes much land in unincorporated San Mateo County (including the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve), as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park (Stanford Hills neighborhood), Woodside, and Portola Valley. The United States Postal Service has assigned Stanford two ZIP codes: 94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P.O. box mail. It lies within area code 650.

History of campus development

In the summer of 1886, when the campus was first being planned, Stanford brought the president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Francis Amasa Walker, and prominent Boston landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted westward for consultations. Olmsted worked out the general concept for the campus and its buildings, rejecting a hillside site in favor of the more practical flatlands. Charles Allerton Coolidge then developed this concept in the style of his late mentor, Henry Hobson Richardson, in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, characterized by rectangular stone buildings linked by arcades of half-circle arches. The original campus was also designed in the Spanish-colonial style common to California known as Mission Revival. The red tile roofs and solid sandstone masonry are distinctly Californian in appearance and famously complementary to the bright blue skies common to the region, and most of the subsequently erected buildings have maintained consistent exteriors.

Much of this first construction was destroyed by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the university retains the Quad, the old Chemistry Building (which is not in use and has been boarded up since the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake), and Encina Hall (the residence of Herbert Hoover, John Steinbeck, and Anthony Kennedy during their times at Stanford). After the 1989 earthquake inflicted further damage, the university implemented a billion-dollar capital improvement plan to retrofit and renovate older buildings for new, up-to-date uses.

Landmarks

Contemporary campus landmarks include the Main Quad and Memorial Church, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts and art gallery, the Stanford Mausoleum and the Angel of Grief, Hoover Tower, the Rodin sculpture garden, the Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden, the Arizona Cactus Garden, the Stanford University Arboretum, Green Library and the Dish. Frank Lloyd Wright's 1937 Hanna-Honeycomb House and the 1919 Lou Henry and Herbert Hoover House are both listed on the National Historic Register.

Faculty residences

One of the benefits of being a Stanford faculty member is the "Faculty Ghetto", where faculty members can live within walking or biking distance of campus. The Faculty Ghetto is composed of land owned entirely by Stanford. Similar to a condominium, the houses can be bought and sold but the land under the houses is rented on a 99-year lease. Houses in the "Ghetto" appreciate and depreciate, but not as rapidly as overall Silicon Valley values. However, it remains an expensive area in which to own property, and the average price of single-family homes on campus is actually higher than in Palo Alto. Stanford itself enjoys the rapid capital gains of Silicon Valley landowners, although by the terms of its founding the university cannot sell the land.

Non-main campus

Stanford currently operates or intends to operate in various locations outside of its main campus.

On the founding grant but away from the main campus: Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve is a nature reserve owned by the university and used by wildlife biologists for research, located south of the main campus. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a facility located south of main campus and originally owned by Stanford but now operated by the university for the Department of Energy. It contains the longest linear particle accelerator in the world, on of land.

Off the founding grant:

Hopkins Marine Station, located in Pacific Grove, California, is a marine biology research center owned by the university since 1892.

Study abroad locations: unlike typical study abroad programs, Stanford itself operates in locations around the globe; thus, each location, which ranges from Beijing to Cape Town, has Stanford faculty-in-residence and staff in addition to students, creating a "mini Stanford."

Locations in development: Redwood City: in 2005, the university purchased a small, campus in Midpoint Technology Park intended for staff offices, although it remains undeveloped. China: the university is currently building a small campus for researchers and students in collaboration with Peking University. New York: the university has submitted a "formal expression of interest" in response to the city of New York's call for proposals to build an engineering campus as a partnership between the city and a "world-class institution." If selected, Stanford would build a satellite campus on Roosevelt Island for engineering, with a focus on information technology, and would also draw on Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, the Graduate School of Business and the Technology Ventures Program.

The university also has its own golf course and a seasonal lake (Lake Lagunita, actually an irrigation reservoir), both home to the vulnerable California Tiger Salamander. Lake Lagunita is often dry now, but the university has no plans to artificially fill it.

Sustainability

Sustainable Stanford is a university-wide effort to reduce environmental impact, preserve resources and show sustainability in action. Administrators, faculty, staff, and students throughout the university are working to research and implement sustainability. Central to this effort is the Environment Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability, a campaign launched to support interdisciplinary research and teaching in all seven of Stanford’s schools and key institutes. Through the initiative, the Stanford community is working to ensure future generations can live well on the planet.

The Department of Sustainability and Energy Management (SEM) leads initiatives in campus infrastructure and programs in the areas of energy and climate, water, transportation, green buildings, and sustainable information technology, as well as various special initiatives. The Office of Sustainability connects campus organizations and entities and works collaboratively with them to steer sustainability initiatives to fulfill President Hennessy’s vision that sustainability will, "become a core value in everything we do." The office works on long-range sustainability analysis and planning, evaluations and reporting, communication and outreach, academic integration, conservation behavior and training, and sustainability governance strategy. For the third consecutive year, Stanford received designation of an Overall Campus Sustainability Leader from the Sustainable Endowments Institute’s College Sustainability Report Card. Stanford earned straight “A” grades in the following topic areas: administration, climate change & energy, food & recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, investment priorities, and shareholder engagement. The ''2009–2010 Year in Review'' provides an overview of the most recent sustainability efforts on campus. The Sustainable Stanford program continues to improve sustainable practices on campus:

In 2009, Stanford announced a Climate and Energy Plan that exceeds California's AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act.

Since 1993, energy retrofits of older buildings have resulted in an estimated savings of more than 240 million kilowatt‐hours of electricity—about 15 months of the university’s current use.

More than a million square feet of new construction has come online with high energy and water efficiency.

Achieved a 21% reduction in domestic water use on campus in 2010 compared with 2000, despite more than 1 million additional GSF added to the building portfolio.

The recycling program diverts 65 percent of waste from landfills.

About 40 percent of produce purchased is organic and/or regionally grown, and Stanford helps support about 30 small farms that grow organic produce.

Designated a Gold-Level “Bicycle Friendly Community,” Stanford boasts 13,000 bikes on campus daily and of bike lanes.

Employee drive-alone rate has been reduced from 72 percent in 2002 to 48 percent in 2010—compared to the national rate of 77 percent—and transit ridership has increased from 8 to 26 percent.

The award-winning transportation program includes the free 41-bus, 15-route Marguerite system running on biodiesel with two diesel-electric hybrid buses; the 7,500-member Commute Club; free transit on Caltrain, VTA, Dumbarton Express and AC Transit’s Line U; Zipcar car sharing; commute planning; charter services; and a bicycle program. Ridership on Marguerite buses climbed to 1,416,508 in 2009. Shuttle ridership at the Caltrain commuter rail stations increased an estimated 30 percent between 2004 and 2009. In 2010, 52 percent of employees used alternative transportation to commute, compared with 24 percent in Santa Clara County

Administration and organization

Stanford University is a tax-exempt corporate trust owned and governed by a privately appointed 35-member Board of Trustees. Trustees serve five-year terms (not more than two consecutive terms) and meet five times annually. The Stanford trustees also oversee the Stanford Research Park, the Stanford Shopping Center, the Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University Medical Center, and many associated medical facilities (including the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital).

The Board appoints a President to serve as the chief executive officer of the university and prescribe the duties of professors and course of study, manage financial and business affairs, and appoint nine vice presidents. John L. Hennessy was appointed the 10th President of the University in October 2000. The Provost is the chief academic and budget officer, to whom the deans of each of the seven schools report. John Etchemendy was named the 12th Provost in September 2000.

The university is organized into seven schools: School of Humanities and Sciences, School of Engineering, School of Earth Sciences, School of Education, Graduate School of Business, Stanford Law School and the Stanford University School of Medicine. The powers and authority of the faculty are vested in the Academic Council, which is made up of tenure and non-tenure line faculty, research faculty, senior fellows in some policy centers and institutes, the president of the university, and some other academic administrators, but most matters are handled by the Faculty Senate, made up of 55 elected representatives of the faculty.

The Associated Students of Stanford University (ASSU) is the student government for Stanford University and all registered students are members. Its elected leadership consists of the Undergraduate Senate elected by the undergraduate students, the Graduate Student Council elected by the graduate students, and the President and Vice President elected as a ticket by the entire student body.

Academics

Stanford University is a large, highly residential research university with a majority of enrollments coming from graduate and professional students. The full-time, four-year undergraduate program is classified as "more selective, lower transfer-in" and has an arts and sciences focus with high graduate student coexistence. Stanford University is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. Full-time undergraduate tuition was $38,700 for 2010-2011.

Research centers and institutes

Other Stanford-affiliated institutions include the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (originally the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and the Stanford Research Institute, a now independent institution which originated at the university, in addition to the Stanford Humanities Center.

Stanford also houses the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, a major public policy think tank that attracts visiting scholars from around the world, and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, which is dedicated to the more specific study of international relations. Unable to locate a copy in any of its libraries, the Soviet Union was obliged to ask the Hoover Institution for a microfilm copy of its original edition of the first issue of ''Pravda'' (dated March 5, 1917).

Stanford is home to the John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalist and the Center for Ocean Solutions, which brings together marine science and policy to develop solutions to challenges facing the ocean.

Libraries and digital resources

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) hold a collection of nearly 9 million volumes, 260,000 rare or special books, 1.5 million e-books, 1.5 million audiovisual materials, 75,000 serials, 6 million microform holdings, and thousands of other digital resources, making it one of the largest and most diverse academic library systems in the world. The main library in the SU library system is Green Library, which also contains various meeting and conference rooms, study spaces, and reading rooms. Meyer Library, a 24-hour library slated for demolition in 2012, holds various student-accessible media resources and has housed one of the largest East Asia collections, whose 540,000 volumes are being transported to an interim location while a new library is rebuilt. Other significant collections include the Lane Medical Library, Terman Engineering Library, Jackson Business Library, Falconer Biology Library, Cubberley Education Library, Branner Earth Sciences Library, Swain Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Library, Jonsson Government Documents collection, Crown Law Library, Center for Ocean Solutions Research Library, Stanford Auxiliary Library (SAL), SLAC Library, Hoover library, Miller Marine Biology Library at Hopkins Marine Station, Music Library, and the university's special collections. There are 20 libraries in all. Several academic departments and some residences also have their own libraries.

Digital libraries and text services include digital image collections, the Humanities Digital Information Services group, and the Media Microtext Center. HighWire Press, the university ePublishing platform, produces and hosts some 1,400 journals and receives over 600 billion requests every month. The Stanford University Press also produces over 175 books each year.

The vast computing resources include some 150,000 computers on the Stanford University Network (SUNet, one of the first to connect to the internet), including clusters of printer-enabled computers in every undergraduate residence (the first residential computing program), as well as high-performance computer clusters for general use throughout the campus.

Stanford is a founding and charter member of CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, the nonprofit organization that provides extremely high-performance Internet-based networking to California's K-20 research and education community.

Student body

{| style="text-align:center; float:right; font-size:85%; margin-left:2em; margin:auto;" class="wikitable" |+ ''Demographics of student body'' ! !! Undergraduate !! Graduate !! California !! U.S. Census |- ! African American | 10% || 3% || 6.2% || 12.1% |- ! Asian American | 23% || 13% || 12.3% || 4.3% |- ! White American | 36% || 35% || 59.8% || 65.8% |- ! Hispanic American | 13% || 5% || 35.9% || 14.5% |- ! Native American | 2.8% || <1% || 0.7% || 0.9% |- ! International student | 7% || 33% || N/A || N/A |}

Stanford enrolled 6,887 undergraduate and 8,779 graduate students in the 2010-2011 year. Women comprised 48% of undergraduates and 37% of professional and graduate students. The freshman retention rate for 2010 was 98%, the four-year graduation rate is 78.4%, and the six-year rate is 95%. The relatively low four-year graduation rate is a function of the university's coterminal degree (or "coterm") program, which allows students to earn a Master's degree as an extension of their undergraduate program.

Stanford awarded 1,671 undergraduate degrees, 2,068 Master's degrees, 708 doctoral degrees, and 270 professional degrees in 2010. The most popular Bachelor's degrees were in the social sciences, interdisciplinary studies, and engineering.

For the class of 2014, Stanford received 32,022 applications and accepted 2300 or 7.2%, the lowest in the university's history and among the lowest in the country. For the class of 2015, Stanford received 5,929 single-choice early action applications and accepted 754 of them, for an early admission rate of 12.7%. This application season Stanford received more than 34,200 total applications from both the regular and early rounds.

The cost of attendance in 2010-2011 is $54,947. Stanford's admission process is need-blind for US citizens and permanent residents; while it is not need-blind for international students, 64% are on need-based aid, with an average aid package of $31,411. In 2010, the university awarded $117 million in financial aid to 3,530 students, with an average aid package of $40,593. total external and internal aid (including jobs and optional loans) amounted to $172.3 million to undergraduate students. 80% of students are on some form of financial aid. Stanford's no-loan policy waives tuition, room, and board for families with incomes below $60,000, and families with incomes below $100,000 are not required to pay tuition (those with incomes up to $150,000 will have tuition significantly reduced). 17% of students receive Pell Grants, a common measure of low-income students at a college. 15% of the undergraduates are first-generation students.

Rankings

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thes w	4th
usnwr nu	5th
forbes	6th
usnwr bus	1st
usnwr law	3rd
usnwr medr	6th
usnwr medc	58th
usnwr eng	2nd
usnwr ed	2nd
cgc nu	3rd
qs w	13th
arwu w	3rd
arwu n	3rd
arwu sci	6th
arwu eng	2nd
arwu life	5th
arwu med	11th
arwu soc	4th
wamo nu	4th
fspi	5th }}

Stanford is consistently ranked among the top universities in the world, both for undergraduate teaching and graduate-level research. The ''U.S. News and World Report'' (USNWR) ranks it fifth among large universities for its undergraduate program in 2009. In the 2011 ''U.S. News'' graduate school rankings, Stanford also placed in the top 5 for every discipline in which it was ranked, except bioengineering, where it placed 8th.

The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranked Stanford 3rd in the world in 2010. ARWU ranked Stanford 7th in Natural Sciences and Mathematics, 2nd in Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences, 5th in Life and Agriculture Sciences, 12th in Clinical Medicine and Pharmacy, and 3rd in Social Sciences worldwide. In its subject rankings, ARWU placed Stanford 4th in mathematics, 6th in physics, 4th in chemistry, 1st in computer science, and 4th in economics and business. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranked Stanford 4th best research university in the world in 2010. The ''Times'' also ranked Stanford 3rd in engineering and technology, 3rd in life sciences, 5th in physical sciences, 2nd in arts & humanities, 3rd in social sciences, and 2nd in clinical, pre-clinical and health sciences; no other university places in the top 5 across all broad disciplines studied. The QS World University Rankings placed Stanford 8th in arts & humanities, 2nd in engineering & technology, 6th in social sciences & management, 6th in natural sciences, 4th in life sciences & medicine, and 13th overall.

Stanford places fourth among national universities by ''The Washington Monthly'', second among "global universities" by ''Newsweek'', and tied for 1st with MIT and Columbia University in the first tier among national universities by the Center for Measuring University Performance. In the MINE ParisTech rankings in 2008 measuring the number of Chief Executive Officers among the Fortune Global 500, Stanford is ranked third in the world. According to ''Forbes'', Stanford has produced the second highest number of billionaires of all universities.

Among professional schools, the Stanford Law School is ranked 3rd in the nation while its School of Education is ranked 4th. The Stanford Graduate School of Business is ranked 1st according to ''U.S. News and World Report''. ''Forbes'' ranked the business school at the top in its 2009 "Best Business Schools" list. In the 2010 QS Global 200 Business Schools Report Stanford placed 4th in North America. The School of Medicine is currently ranked 5th in the nation according to ''U.S. News and World Report 2010''.

From a 2010 poll done by the ''Princeton Review'', Stanford is the most commonly named "dream college," both for students and for parents, a title it has held in previous years. According to the 2011 Times Higher Education World Reputation ranking (based on a survey of 13,388 academics over 131 countries, the largest evaluation of academic reputation to date), Stanford is 4th in the world. A 2003 Gallup poll, which asked about the best colleges in the U.S., found that Stanford is the second-most prestigious university (behind Harvard) in the eyes of the general American public and roughly equal in prestige to Harvard among college-education people.

Arts

Stanford University is home to the Cantor Center for Visual Arts museum with 24 galleries, sculpture gardens, terraces, and a courtyard first established in 1891 by Jane and Leland Stanford as a memorial to their only child. Notably, the Center possesses the largest collection of Rodin works outside of Paris, France. There are also a large number of outdoor art installations throughout the campus, primarily sculptures, but some murals as well. The Papua New Guinea Sculpture Garden near Roble Hall features handmade wood carvings and "totem poles."

Stanford has a thriving artistic and musical community. Extracurricular activities include theater groups such as Ram's Head Theatrical Society and the Stanford Shakespeare Society, award-winning a cappella music groups such as the Mendicants, Counterpoint, the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, Harmonics, Mixed Company, Testimony, Talisman, Everyday People, Raagapella, and a group dedicated to performing the works of Gilbert and Sullivan, the Stanford Savoyards. Beyond these, the music department sponsors many ensembles including five choirs, the Stanford Symphony Orchestra, Stanford Taiko, and the Stanford Wind Ensemble.

Stanford's dance community is one of the most vibrant in the country, with an active dance division in the Drama Department and over 30 different dance-related student groups, including the Stanford Band's Dollie dance troupe.

Perhaps most distinctive of all is its social and vintage dance community, cultivated by dance historian Richard Powers and enjoyed by hundreds of students and thousands of alumni. Stanford hosts monthly informal dances (called Jammix) and large quarterly dance events, including Ragtime Ball (fall), the Stanford Viennese Ball (winter), and Big Dance (spring). Stanford also boasts a student-run swing performance troupe called Swingtime and several alumni performance groups, including Decadance and the Academy of Danse Libre.

The creative writing program brings young writers to campus via the Stegner Fellowships and other graduate scholarship programs. ''This Boy's Life'' author Tobias Wolff teaches writing to undergraduates and graduate students. Knight Journalism Fellows are invited to spend a year at the campus taking seminars and courses of their choice. There is also an extracurricular writing and performance group called the Stanford Spoken Word Collective, which also serves as the school's poetry slam team.

Stanford also hosts various publishing courses for professionals. Stanford Professional Publishing Course, which has been offered on campus since the late 1970s, brings together international publishing professionals to discuss changing business models in magazine and book publishing.

Endowment and fundraising

The university's endowment, managed by the Stanford Management Company, was valued at $17.2 billion in 2008 and had achieved an annualized rate of return of 15.1% since 1998. In the economic downturn of January 2009, however, the endowment has dropped 20 to 30 percent. According to the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', "Stanford's endowment has lost approximately $4 billion to $5 billion, or 20 to 30 percent of its value" since 2008. As a result, all campus units are cutting their budgets by 15 percent in 2009.

Stanford has been the top fundraising university in the United States for several years, sometimes doubling the fundraising amounts of its top competitors. It raised $911 million in 2006, $832 million in 2007, $785 million in 2008, $640 million in 2009, and $599 million in 2010.

In 2006, President Hennessy launched the Stanford Challenge, a $4.3 billion fundraising campaign focusing on three components: multidisciplinary research initiatives, initiatives to improve education, and core support. In 2009, Stanford surpassed that goal two years ahead of time, despite the economic downturn, making it the most successful collegiate fundraising effort in history; however, Stanford has continued with the campaign for its final two years in order to meet all its initial goals fully.

Student life

Dormitories and student housing

Eighty-nine percent of undergraduate students live in on-campus university housing, partially because first-year students are required to live on campus, and because students are guaranteed housing for all four years of their undergraduate careers. According to the Stanford Housing Assignments Office, undergraduates live in 80 different houses, including dormitories, co-ops, row houses, fraternities and sororities. At Manzanita Park, 118 mobile homes were installed as "temporary" housing from 1969 to 1991, but it is now the site of modern dorms Castano, Kimball, and Lantana. Most student residences are located just outside the campus core, within ten minutes (on foot or bike) of most classrooms and libraries. Some are for freshmen only; others give priority to sophomores, others to both freshmen and sophomores; some are for upperclass students only, and some are open to all four classes. Most residences are co-ed; seven are all-male fraternities, three are all-female sororities, and there is also one all-female non-sorority house, Roth House. In most residences, men and women live on the same floor, but a few dorms are configured for men and women to live on separate floors (single-gender floors), including all Wilbur dorms except for Arroyo and Okada. Beginning in 2009-10, the University's housing plan anticipates that all freshmen desiring to live in all-freshman dorms will be accommodated. In the 2009-10 year, almost two-thirds of freshmen will be housed in Stern and Wilbur Halls. The one-third who requested four-class housing will be located in other dormitories throughout campus, including Florence Moore (FloMo). In April 2008, Stanford unveiled a new pilot plan to test out gender-neutral housing in five campus residences, allowing males and females to live in the same room. This was after concerted student pressure, as well as the institution of similar policies at peer institutions such as Wesleyan, Oberlin, Clark, Dartmouth, Brown, and UPenn.

Several residences are considered theme houses. The Academic, Language and Culture Houses include EAST (East Asian Studies Theme), Hammarskjöld (International Theme), Haus Mitteleuropa (Central European Theme), La Casa Italiana (Italian Language and Culture), La Maison Française (French Language and Culture House), Slavianskii Dom (Slavic/East European Theme House), Storey (Human Biology Theme House), and Yost (Spanish Language and Culture).Cross-Cultural Theme Houses include Casa Zapata (Chicano/Latino Theme in Stern Hall), Muwekma-tah-ruk (American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Theme), Okada (Asian-American Theme in Wilbur Hall), and Ujamaa (Black/African-American Theme in Lagunita Court). Focus Houses include Freshman-Sophomore College (Freshman Focus), Branner Hall (Community Service), Kimball (Arts & Performing Arts), Crothers (Global Citizenship), and Toyon (Sophomore Priority).

Another famous style of housing at Stanford is the co-ops. These houses feature cooperative living, where residents and eating associates each contribute work to keep the house running, such as cooking meals or cleaning shared spaces. The co-ops on campus are Chi Theta Chi, Columbae, Enchanted Broccoli Forest (EBF), Hammarskjöld (which is also the International Theme House), Kairos, Terra, and Synergy.

At any time, around 50 percent of the graduate population lives on campus. Now that construction has concluded on the new Munger graduate residence, this percentage has probably increased. First-year graduate students are guaranteed housing.

Traditions

Full Moon on the Quad: A student gathering in the Main Quad of the university. Traditionally, seniors exchange kisses with freshmen, although students of all four classes (as well as the occasional graduate student or stranger) have been known to participate. Sunday Flicks: A weekly Sunday night film screening in Memorial Auditorium. Usually, students are very loud and crazy during the screenings, and can be seen flying paper airplanes or simply throwing wads of newspaper at each other. Flicks ran into significant financial trouble in 2006 and after an ASSU bail-out became free for all students. Steam-tunnelling: The act of exploring the steam tunnels under the Stanford campus. Fountain-hopping: The act of running from one fountain on campus to another, or simply leaping/swimming around in any of Stanford's many fountains (such as the so-called Claw fountain in White Plaza). Big Game events: The events in the week leading up to the Big Game vs. UC Berkeley, including Gaieties (a musical written, composed, produced, and performed by the students of Ram's Head Theatrical Society), The Bearial (in which the Stanford Band performs a funeral-like procession and pierces a stuffed-animal bear on the tip of the Stanford Claw fountain), and an hourly train whistle that counts down the hours until Big Game, orchestrated by the Stanford Axe Committee. Primal scream: Performed by stressed students at midnight during Dead Week (the week prior to finals). Midnight Breakfast: During Winter quarter dead week, Stanford faculty serves breakfast to students in several locations on campus (you might see a vice-provost refilling orange juice, etc.) Viennese Ball: a formal ball with waltzes that was started in the 1970s by students returning from the now-closed Stanford in Vienna overseas program. The Stanford Powwow: Organized by the Stanford American Indian Organization since 1971 and held every Mother's Day weekend. Mausoleum Party: An annual Halloween Party at the Stanford Mausoleum, which contains the corpses of Leland Stanford, Jr. and his parents. A 20-year tradition, the Mausoleum party was on hiatus from 2002 to 2005 due to a lack of funding from the alumni, but was revived in 2006. In 2008, it was hosted in Old Union rather than at the actual Mausoleum, because rain prohibited generators from being rented. In 2009, after fundraising efforts by the Junior Class Presidents and the ASSU Executive, the event was able to return to the Mausoleum despite facing budget cuts earlier in the year. Stanford Charity Fashion Show: A large student-run diversity fashion show showcasing student, local, and international designers that was started in 1991 by the Asian American Students' Association. Senior Pub Night: On most Thursdays during the school year, seniors gather at a bar in Palo Alto or San Francisco. The location rotates week to week, and chartered buses are organized to take the seniors safely between the bar and campus. Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman: Stanford does not award honorary degrees, but in 1953 the University created the degree of Uncommon Man/Uncommon Woman for individuals who give rare and extraordinary service to the University. The University's highest honor, the degree is not given at prescribed intervals, but only when appropriate to recognize extraordinary service. Recipients include Herbert Hoover, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard, Lucile Packard, and John Gardner. Birthday Showers: Students get thrown in the shower by their friends at midnight on their birthdays. A Capella groups perform in student residences during New Student Orientation and throughout the year. Some of the most notable original songs include those by humor-focused Fleet Street Singers, such as "Everyone Pees in the Shower" and "Pray to the God of Partial Credit." The Game: Is a treasure hunt put on by dorm staff usually in the spring and summer quarters. Secret Snowflake: Students are given three dares by anonymous residents within their dorm. These students have to perform these dares (one a night for three nights) in front of the whole dorm. These dare can range from tame activities (e.g. singing Like a Virgin in a wedding dress) to extreme (e.g. nudity, stunts). This week of dares is carried out near the end of fall quarter before Christmas Break. Valentine's Day Serenade: In the freshmen dorms, all of the guys in the dorm wake up all of the girls very early in the morning on Valentine's Day. Each girl is given a single rose and is then brought to the dorm lounge where all of the guys serenade the girls with a love song. Assassins: Participating students are assigned a target to "kill" with a water gun. A "kill" is only valid if no other person witnesses the "kill" and the target is "killed" outside of his/her dorm room and bathroom. Over a period of weeks, targets are eliminated until only one assassin victoriously remains.

Former campus traditions include the Big Game bonfire on Lake Lagunita (a seasonal lake usually dry in the fall), which is now inactive because of the presence of endangered salamanders in the lake bed.

Greek life

Fraternities and sororities have been active on the Stanford campus since 1891, when the University first opened. In 1944, University President Donald Tresidder banned all Stanford sororities due to extreme competition. However, following Title IX, the Board of Trustees lifted the 33-year ban on sororities in 1977. Stanford is now home to 29 Greek organizations, including 13 sororities and 16 fraternities, representing 13% of undergraduates. In contrast to many universities, nine of the ten housed Greek organizations live in University-owned houses, the exception being Sigma Chi, which owns its own house (but not the land) on The Row. Six chapters are members of the African American Fraternal and Sororal Association, 11 chapters are members of the Interfraternity Council, 6 chapters belong to the Intersorority Council, and 6 chapters belong to the Multicultural Greek Council.

Stanford is home to three unhoused historically NPHC (National Pan-Hellenic Council or "Divine Nine") three sororities (Alpha Kappa Alpha, Delta Sigma Theta, and Sigma Gamma Rho) and three unhoused NPHC fraternities (Alpha Phi Alpha, Kappa Alpha Psi, and Phi Beta Sigma). These fraternities and sororities operate under the AAFSA (African American Fraternal Sororal Association) at Stanford.

Seven historically NPC (National Panhellenic Conference) sororities, four of which are unhoused (Alpha Phi, Alpha Epsilon Phi, Chi Omega, and Kappa Kappa Gamma) and three of which are housed (Delta Delta Delta, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Pi Beta Phi) call Stanford home. These sororities operate under the Stanford Inter-sorority Council (ISC).

Eleven historically NIC (National Interfraternity Conference) fraternities are also represented at Stanford, including four unhoused fraternities (Alpha Epsilon Pi, Delta Kappa Epsilon, Delta Tau Delta, and Sigma Phi Epsilon), and seven housed fraternities (Kappa Alpha, Kappa Sigma, Phi Kappa Psi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, Sigma Nu, and Theta Delta Chi). These fraternities operate under the Stanford Inter-fraternity Council (IFC).

There are also four unhoused MGC (Multicultural Greek Council) sororities on campus (Alpha Kappa Delta Phi, Lambda Theta Nu, Sigma Psi Zeta, and Sigma Theta Psi), as well as two unhoused MGC fraternities (Gamma Zeta Alpha and Lambda Phi Epsilon). Lambda Phi Epsilon is recognized by the National Interfraternity Conference (NIC).

Student groups

Stanford offers its students the opportunity to engage in over 650 groups. Groups are often, though not always, partially funded by the University via allocations directed by the student government organization, the ASSU. These funds include "special fees", which are decided by a Spring Quarter vote by the student body. Groups span from Athletic/Recreational, Careers/Pre-professional, Community Service, Ethnic/Cultural, Fraternities/Sororities, Health/Counseling, Media/Publications, Music/Dance/Creative Arts, Political/Social Awareness to Religious/Philosophical.

Groups include (but are not limited to):

The ''Stanford Daily'' is an independent organization located on campus, and is the daily newspaper serving Stanford University. It has been published since the University was founded in 1892.

The Stanford Axe Committee is the official guardian of the Stanford Axe and the rest of the time assists the Stanford Band as a supplementary spirit group.

The Stanford Pre-Business Association is the largest business-focused undergraduate organization. It plays an instrumental role in establishing an active link between the industry, alumni, and student communities.

The Stanford solar car project, where students build a solar-powered car every 2 years and race it in either the North American Solar Challenge or the World Solar Challenge.

Stanford Astronomical Society organizes viewings of meteor showers, lunar eclipses, and other astronomical events.

The Stanford Kite Flying Society (founded 2008), a group of undergraduates dedicated to flying kites. Society "meetings" are usually on Wilbur Field when it is windy out. The Pilipino American Student Union (PASU), a culture-oriented community service and social activism group. Also integral to PASU is a traditional performing arts arm called Kayumanggi.

Stanford Finance is a pre-professional organization aimed at mentoring students who want to enter a career in finance, through mentors and internships.

BASES, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students is one of the largest professional organizations in Silicon Valley, with over 5,000 members. Its goal is to support the next generation of entrepreneurs.

The Stanford Fleet Street Singers is an all-male Acappella group specializing in comedic original compositions, jazz, and Stanford fight songs. Because Fleet Street maintains Stanford songs as a regular part of its performing repertoire, Stanford University used the group as ambassadors during the University's centennial celebration and commissioned an album, entitled Up Toward Mountains Higher (1999), of Stanford songs which were sent to alumni around the world.

The Stanford Martial Arts Program (SMAP) is an umbrella organization for 11 different martial arts groups on campus: Aikido, Capoeira, Eskrima, Judo, Jujitsu, Kenpo Karate, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, JKA Shotokan, Taekwondo, and Wushu.

The Stanford Women In Business (SWIB) is an on-campus business organization consisting of over a board of 40 and 100 active members. Each year, SWIB organizes over 25 events and workshops, hosts a winter and spring conference, and provides mentorship and spring quarter internships. The Claw Magazine, named after the fountain in White Plaza, is an undergraduate publication that features humor, artwork, investigative reporting, and fiction.

Athletics

Stanford participates in the NCAA's Division I-A and is a member of the Pacific-12 Conference. Stanford has constantly won the NACDA Directors' Cup, The University of North Carolina won the award for best Division I collegiate athletics program in its inaugural year. Since then, Stanford University has won it seventeen straight years, winning seventeen out of the eighteen years it has been offered. It also participates in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation for indoor track (men and women), fencing (men and women), water polo (men and women), women's gymnastics, women's lacrosse, men's gymnastics, and men's volleyball. The women's field hockey team is part of the NorPac Conference. Stanford's traditional sports rival is the University of California, Berkeley, its neighbor to the north in the East Bay.

Stanford offers 34 varsity sports (18 female, 15 male, one coed), 19 club sports and 37 intramural sports—about 800 students participate in intercollegiate sports. The university offers about 300 athletic scholarships.

The winner of the annual "Big Game" between the Cal and Stanford football teams gains custody of the Stanford Axe. The first "Big Game", played at Haight Street Park in San Francisco on March 19, 1892, established football on the west coast. Stanford won 14 to 10 in front of 8 thousand spectators. Stanford's football team played in the first Rose Bowl in 1902. However, the violence of the sport at the time, coupled with the post-game rioting of drunken spectators, led San Francisco to bar further "Big Games" in the city in 1905. In 1906, David Starr Jordan banned football from Stanford. The 1906–1914 "Big Game" contests featured rugby instead of football. Stanford football was resumed in 1919. Stanford won back-to-back Rose Bowls in 1971 and 1972. Stanford has played in 12 Rose Bowls, most recently in 2000. Stanford's Jim Plunkett won the Heisman Trophy in 1970.

Club sports, while not officially a part of Stanford athletics, are numerous at Stanford. Sports include archery, badminton, cheerleading, cricket, cycling, equestrian, hurling, ice hockey, judo, kayaking, men's lacrosse, polo, racquetball, rugby union, squash, skiing, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon and Ultimate. The men's Ultimate team won national championships in 1984 and 2002, the women's Ultimate team in 1997, 1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006, and 2007, the women's rugby team in 1999, 2005, 2006 and 2008. The cycling team won the 2007 Division I USA Cycling Collegiate Road National Championships.

Until 1930, Stanford did not have a "mascot" name for its athletic teams. In that year, the athletic department adopted the name "Indians." In 1972, "Indians" was dropped after a complaint of racial insensitivity was lodged by Native American students.

The Stanford sports teams are now officially referred to as the Stanford Cardinal, referring to the deep red color, not the cardinal bird. Cardinal, and later cardinal and white has been the university's official color since the 19th century. The Band's mascot, "The Tree", has become associated with the school in general. Part of the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band (LSJUMB), the tree symbol derives from the El Palo Alto redwood tree on the Stanford and City of Palo Alto seals.

Stanford hosts an annual U.S. Open Series tennis tournament, the Bank of the West Classic, at Taube Stadium. Cobb Track, Angell Field, and Avery Stadium Pool are considered world-class athletic facilities. Stanford Stadium hosted Super Bowl XIX on January 20, 1985, in which the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Miami Dolphins by a score of 38–16 and several group stage matches in the 1994 FIFA World Cup.

Stanford has won the award for the top ranked collegiate athletic program—the NACDA Director's Cup, formerly known as the ''Sears Cup''—every year for the past seventeen years. Stanford has had at least one NCAA team champion every year since the 1976-77 school year.

NCAA achievements: Stanford has earned 101 National Collegiate Athletic Association national team titles since its establishment, second most behind the University of California, Los Angeles, and 467 individual National championships, the most by any university. The 101st championship was won by the 2010-2011 Stanford Women's Water Polo team.

Olympic achievements: According to the ''Stanford Daily'', "Stanford has been represented in every summer Olympiad since 1908." As of 2004, Stanford athletes had won 182 Olympic medals at the summer games; "In fact, in every Olympiad since 1912, Stanford athletes have won at least one and as many as 17 gold medals." Stanford athletes won 24 medals at the 2008 Summer Games—8 gold, 12 silver and 4 bronze.

Notable alumni, faculty, and staff

Stanford alumni have started many companies including Hewlett-Packard (William Hewlett and David Packard), Cisco Systems (Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack), NVIDIA, SGI, VMware, MIPS Technologies, Yahoo! (Chih-Yuan Yang and David Filo), Google (Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page), Wipro Technologies (Azim Premji), Nike, Gap (Doris Fisher), Logitech, and Sun Microsystems (Vinod Khosla). The ''Sun'' in Sun Microsystems originally stood for "Stanford University Network."

Stanford's current community of scholars includes: 16 Nobel Prize laureates; 137 members of the National Academy of Sciences; 95 members of National Academy of Engineering; 62 members of Institute of Medicine; 258 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 19 recipients of the National Medal of Science; 2 recipients of the National Medal of Technology; 30 members of the National Academy of Education; 43 members of American Philosophical Society; 56 fellows of the American Physics Society (since 1995); 4 Pulitzer Prize winners; 24 MacArthur Fellows; 7 Wolf Foundation Prize winners; 6 Koret Foundation Prize winners; 2 ACL Lifetime Achievement Award winners; 14 AAAI fellows; 3 Presidential Medal of Freedom winners.

Stanford has been affiliated with over 50 Nobel laureates, as well as 19 recipients (mostly as faculty) of the Turing Award, the so-called "Nobel Prize in computer science," comprising nearly half of the awards given in its 44-year history. The university is also affiliated with 4 Gödel Prize and 4 Knuth Prize recipients, for their work in the foundations of computer science.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, former U.S. President Herbert Hoover, former U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo are alumni.

NBA guard Landry Fields, NFL quarterbacks Jim Plunkett, Trent Edwards and John Elway, NFL receivers Gordon Banks and Ed McCaffrey, NFL Fullback Jon Ritchie, runner Ryan Hall, MLB starting pitcher Mike Mussina, MLB left-fielder Carlos Quentin, MLB infielder Jed Lowrie, Grand Slam winning tennis players John McEnroe (did not graduate) (singles and doubles) and (doubles) Bob and Mike Bryan, professional golfer Tiger Woods (did not graduate), New Zealand Football and Blackburn Rovers Defender Ryan Nelsen, Olympic swimmers Jenny Thompson, Summer Sanders and Pablo Morales, Olympic figure skater Debi Thomas, Olympic water polo players Tony Azevedo and Brenda Villa, Olympic softball player Jessica Mendoza, Olympic volleyball player Kerri Walsh, Heisman finalist Toby Gerhart, and actress Reese Witherspoon (did not graduate) are alumni.

Actresses Jennifer Connelly and Sigourney Weaver (her alumna status was featured in the 2009 film Avatar), actor Ben Savage, and political commentator Rachel Maddow are prominent graduates. 21st President of Pacific Union College, Heather Knight did her doctoral studies at Stanford.

References

Further reading

Ronald N. Bracewell, ''Trees of Stanford and Environs'' (Stanford Historical Society, 2005)

Ken Fenyo, ''The Stanford Daily 100 Years of Headlines'' (2003-10-01) ISBN 0-9743654-0-8

Jean Fetter, ''Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford'' (1997-07-01) ISBN 0-8047-3158-6

Ricard Joncas, David Neumann, and Paul V. Turner. ''Stanford University. The Campus Guide.'' Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. Available online.

Stuart W. Leslie'', The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford'', Columbia University Press 1994

Rebecca S. Lowen, R. S. Lowen, ''Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford'', University of California Press 1997

Viewing

DVD: Legends of Stanford (2008-09-23) UPC: 182490000514 Amazon entry

External links

Stanford at Facebook

Category:Association of American Universities Category:Educational institutions established in 1891 Category:National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities members Category:Universities and colleges in Santa Clara County, California Category:Schools accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Category:Romanesque Revival architecture in California

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name	Steve Jobs
birth name	Steven Paul Jobs
birth date	February 24, 1955
birth place
death date	October 05, 2011
death place	Palo Alto, California, U.S.
nationality	American
occupation	Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc., Co-founder and CEO, Pixar, Co-founder and CEO, NeXT Inc.
alma mater	Reed College (dropped out)
years active	1974–2011
boards	The Walt Disney Company, Apple Inc.
religion	Zen Buddhism
spouse	Laurene Powell(1991–2011, his death)
children	4 – Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Reed, Erin, Eve
relatives	Mona Simpson (sister)
signature	Steve Jobs signature.svg
signature size	120px }}

Steven Paul Jobs (; February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, designer and inventor. He is best known as the co-founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Through Apple, he was widely recognized as a charismatic pioneer of the personal computer revolution and for his influential career in the computer and consumer electronics fields. Jobs also co-founded and served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, when Disney acquired Pixar.

In the late 1970s, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak engineered one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Apple Lisa and, one year later, the Macintosh. During this period he also led efforts that would begin the desktop publishing revolution, notably through the introduction of the LaserWriter and the associated PageMaker software.

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs left Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm, which was spun off as Pixar. He was credited in ''Toy Story'' (1995) as an executive producer. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2006, making Jobs Disney's largest individual shareholder at seven percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.

After difficulties developing a new Mac OS, Apple purchased NeXT in 1996 in order to use NeXTSTEP as the basis for what became Mac OS X. As part of the deal Jobs was named Apple advisor. As Apple floundered, Jobs took control of the company and was named "interim CEO" in 1997, or as he jokingly referred to it, "iCEO". Facing near bankruptcy at the time of his return, Jobs quickly improved the company's fortunes and returned it to profitability in 1998. Over the next decade, Jobs oversaw the development of the iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad and on the services side, the company's Apple Retail Stores, iTunes Store and the App Store. The enormous success of these products and services, providing years of stable financial returns, propelled Apple to become the world's most valuable company in 2011. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded as one of the greatest business turnaround stories in history.

In 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a pancreas neuroendocrine tumor. Though it was initially treated, he reported a hormone imbalance, underwent a liver transplant in 2009, and appeared progressively thinner as his health declined. On medical leave for most of 2011, Jobs resigned as Apple CEO in August that year and was elected Chairman of the Board. He died of respiratory arrest related to his metastatic tumor on October 5, 2011. He continues to receive honors and public recognition for his influence in the technology and music industries.

Early life and education

Steven Paul Jobs was born in San Francisco on 24 February 1955, to two university students, Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian born Abdulfattah "John" Jandali (), who were both unmarried at the time. Jandali who was teaching in Wisconsin when Steve was born in 1955, said he had no choice but to put the baby up for adoption because his girlfriend's family objected to their relationship. He was adopted at birth by Paul Reinhold Jobs (1922–1993) and Clara Jobs (1924–1986). Clara's maiden name was Hagopian. When asked about his "adoptive parents," Jobs replied emphatically that Paul and Clara Jobs "were my parents." He later stated in his authorized biography that they "were my parents 1,000%." His biological parents subsequently married (December 1955), had a second child Mona Simpson in 1957, and divorced in 1962.

The Jobs family moved from San Francisco to Mountain View, California when Steve was five years old. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Paul Jobs, a machinist for a company that made lasers, taught his son rudimentary electronics and how to work with his hands. Clara was an accountant who taught him to read before he went to school. Clara Jobs had been a payroll clerk for Varian Associates, one of the first high-tech firms in what became known as Silicon Valley.

Jobs attended Monta Loma Elementary, Mountain View, Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California, and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Early career

In 1974, Jobs took a job as a technician at Atari, Inc. in Los Gatos, California. He traveled to India in mid-1974 to visit Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, an early Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. When they got to the Neem Karoli ashram, it was almost deserted as Neem Karoli Baba had died in September 1973. Then they made a long trek up a dry riverbed to an ashram of Hariakhan Baba. In India, they spent a lot of time on bus rides from Delhi to Uttar Pradesh and back, then up to Himachal Pradesh and back.

Jobs left India after staying for seven months and returned to the US ahead of Daniel Kottke, with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". He also became a serious practitioner of Zen Buddhism, engaged in lengthy meditation retreats at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the oldest Sōtō Zen monastery in the US, considered taking up monastic residence, and maintained a lifelong appreciation for Zen. He later said that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.

Jobs returned to Atari and was assigned to create a circuit board for the game ''Breakout''. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350. Wozniak did not learn about the bonus until ten years later, but said that had Jobs told him about it and said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him.

Jobs began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak in 1975. He greatly admired Edwin H. Land, the inventor of instant photography and founder of Polaroid Corporation, and explicitly modeled his own career after that of Land's.

The revised, second-generation NeXTcube was released in 1990, also. Jobs touted it as the first "interpersonal" computer that would replace the personal computer. With its innovative NeXTMail multimedia email system, NeXTcube could share voice, image, graphics, and video in email for the first time. "Interpersonal computing is going to revolutionize human communications and groupwork", Jobs told reporters. Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by the development of and attention to NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel. The company reported its first profit of $1.03 million in 1994. In 1996, NeXT Software, Inc. released WebObjects, a framework for Web application development. After NeXT was acquired by Apple Inc. in 1997, WebObjects was used to build and run the Apple Store, MobileMe services, and the iTunes Store.

Pixar and Disney

In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.

The first film produced by the partnership, ''Toy Story'', with Jobs credited as executive producer, brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company produced box-office hits ''A Bug's Life'' (1998); ''Toy Story 2'' (1999); ''Monsters, Inc.'' (2001); ''Finding Nemo'' (2003); ''The Incredibles'' (2004); ''Cars'' (2006); ''Ratatouille'' (2007); ''WALL-E'' (2008); ''Up'' (2009); and ''Toy Story 3'' (2010). ''Finding Nemo'', ''The Incredibles'', ''Ratatouille'', ''WALL-E'', ''Up'' and ''Toy Story 3'' each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.

In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004, Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films after its contract with Disney expired.

In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. When the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately seven percent of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceeded those of Eisner, who holds 1.7 percent, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about one percent of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner — especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar — accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger and also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses from a seat on a special six-person steering committee. Upon Jobs's death his shares in Disney were transferred to the Steven P. Jobs Trust led by Laurene Jobs.

Return to Apple

In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $427 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he co-founded. Jobs became ''de facto'' chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997. He was formally named interim chief executive in September. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs's summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.

With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance, the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title "iCEO".

Inventions and designs

His design sense was greatly influenced by the Buddhism which he experienced in India while on a seven-month spiritual journey. His sense of intuition was also influenced by the spiritual people with whom he studied.

, Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 342 United States patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. Most of these are design patents (specific product designs) as opposed to utility patents (inventions). He has 43 issued US patents on inventions. The patent on the Mac OS X Dock user interface with "magnification" feature was issued the day before he died.

Philanthropy

Arik Hesseldahl of ''BusinessWeek'' magazine stated that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates's efforts. Jobs said (in 1985) that he does charitable acts privately. After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs initially. Later, under Jobs, Apple signed to participate in Product Red program, producing red versions of devices to give profits from sales to charity. Apple has gone on to become the single largest contributor to the charity since its initial involvement with it. The chief of the Product Red project, singer Bono cited Jobs saying there was "nothing better than the chance to save lives," when he initially approached Apple with the invitation to participate in the program.

Personal life

Jobs's birth parents met at the University of Wisconsin. Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian Muslim, taught there. Joanne Carole Schieble was his student; they were the same age because Jandali had "gotten his PhD really young." In December 1955, ten months after giving up their baby boy, Schieble and Jandali married. In 1957, they had a daughter Mona together. They divorced in 1962, and Jandali lost touch with his daughter. Her mother remarried and had Mona take the surname of her stepfather, so she became known as Mona Simpson.

In the 1980s, Jobs found his birth mother, Joanne Schieble Simpson, who told him he had a biological sister, Mona Simpson. They met for the first time in 1985 and became close friends. The siblings kept their relationship secret until 1986, when Mona introduced him at a party for her first book.

After deciding to search for their father, Simpson found Jandali managing a coffee shop. Without knowing who his son had become, Jandali told Mona that he had previously managed a popular restaurant in the Silicon Valley where "Even Steve Jobs used to eat there. Yeah, he was a great tipper." In a taped interview with his biographer Walter Isaacson, aired on ''60 Minutes'', Jobs said: "When I was looking for my biological mother, obviously, you know, I was looking for my biological father at the same time, and I learned a little bit about him and I didn't like what I learned. I asked her to not tell him that we ever met...not tell him anything about me." Jobs was in occasional touch with his mother Joanne Simpson, who lives in a nursing home in Los Angeles. When speaking about his biological parents, Jobs stated: "They were my sperm and egg bank. That's not harsh, it's just the way it was, a sperm bank thing, nothing more." Jandali stated in an interview with the ''The Sun'' in August 2011, that his efforts to contact Jobs were unsuccessful. Jandali mailed in his medical history after Jobs's pancreatic disorder was made public that year.

In her eulogy to Jobs at his memorial service, Mona Simpson stated: :I grew up as an only child, with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif. I hoped he would be rich and kind and would come into our lives (and our not yet furnished apartment) and help us. Later, after I'd met my father, I tried to believe he'd changed his number and left no forwarding address because he was an idealistic revolutionary, plotting a new world for the Arab people. Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Jobs's first child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, was born in 1978, the daughter of his longtime partner Chris Ann Brennan, a Bay Area painter. For two years, she raised their daughter on welfare while Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter. Jobs later married Laurene Powell on March 18, 1991, in a ceremony at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. Presiding over the wedding was Kobun Chino Otogawa, a Zen Buddhist monk. Their son, Reed, was born September 1991, followed by daughters Erin in August 1995, and Eve in 1998. The family lives in Palo Alto, California.

In the unauthorized biography, ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan" (Dylan was the Apple icon's favorite musician). In another unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs'' by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.

Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on ''60 Minutes'', he replied:

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people. Jobs told Walter Isaacson "...he came to like the idea of having a uniform for himself, both because of its daily convenience (the rationale he claimed) and its ability to convey a signature style." He was a pescetarian.

Jobs's car was a silver 2008 Mercedes-Benz SL 55 AMG, which does not display its license plates, as he took advantage of a California law which gives a maximum of six months for new vehicles to receive plates; Jobs leased a new identical SL every six months.

In a 2011 interview with biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs revealed at one point he met with U.S. President Barack Obama, complained of the nation's shortage of software engineers, and told Mr. Obama that he was "headed for a one-term presidency." Jobs proposed that any foreign student who got an engineering degree at a U.S. university should automatically be offered a green card. After the meeting, Jobs commented, "The president is very smart, but he kept explaining to us reasons why things can't get done.... It infuriates me."

Jobs contributed to a number of political candidates and causes during his life, giving $209,000 to Democrats, $19,000 to associated special interests and $1,000 to a Republican.

Health issues

In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with cancer, and in mid-2004, he announced to his employees that he had a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor; Jobs stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. Despite his diagnosis, Jobs resisted his doctors' recommendations for mainstream medical intervention for nine months, instead consuming a special alternative medicine diet in an attempt to thwart the disease. According to Harvard researcher Dr. Ramzi Amir, his choice of alternative treatment "led to an unnecessarily early death". According to Jobs's biographer, Walter Isaacson, "for nine months he refused to undergo surgery for his pancreatic cancer – a decision he later regretted as his health declined." "Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, before finally having surgery in July 2004." He eventually underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004, that appeared to successfully remove the tumor.

Death

Jobs died at his California home around 3 p.m. on October 5, 2011, due to complications from a relapse of his previously treated islet-cell neuroendocrine pancreatic cancer, He had lost consciousness the day before, and died with his wife, children and sister at his side.

His death was announced by Apple in a statement which read:

Jobs is survived by Laurene, his wife of 20 years, their three children, and Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter from a previous relationship. His family released a statement saying that he "died peacefully".

For two weeks following his death, Apple's corporate Web site displayed a simple page, showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his grayscale portrait. Clicking on the image led to an obituary, which read:

Also dedicating its homepage to Jobs was Pixar, with a photo of Jobs, John Lasseter and Edwin Catmull, and the eulogy they wrote:

An email address was also posted for the public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts. Over a million tributes were sent, which are now displayed on the Steve Jobs memorial page.

Shortly after his death was announced, ABC, CBS, and NBC interrupted scheduled programming to broadcast this news. Numerous newspapers around the world carried news of his death on their front pages the next day. Several notable people, including US President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and The Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger commented on the death of Jobs. ''Wired News'' collected reactions and posted them in tribute on their homepage.

A small private funeral was held on October 7, 2011, of which details were not revealed out of respect to Jobs's family. Apple announced on the same day that they had no plans for a public service, but were encouraging "well-wishers" to send their remembrance messages to an email address created to receive such messages. Sunday, October 16, 2011, was declared "Steve Jobs Day" by Governor Jerry Brown of California. On that day, an invitation-only memorial was held at Stanford University. Those in attendance include Apple and other tech company executives, members of the media, celebrities, close friends of Jobs, and politicians, along with Jobs's family. Bono, Yo Yo Ma, and Joan Baez performed at the service, which lasted longer than an hour. The service was highly secured, with guards at all of the university's gates, and a helicopter flying overhead from an area news station.

Both Apple and Microsoft flew their flags at half-staff throughout their respective headquarters and campuses. Bob Iger ordered all Disney properties, including Walt Disney World and Disneyland, to fly their flags at half-staff, from October 6 to 12, 2011.

A private memorial service for Apple employees was held on October 19, 2011, on the Apple Campus in Cupertino. Present were Cook, Bill Campbell, Norah Jones, Al Gore, and Coldplay, and Jobs's widow, Laurene, was in attendance. Some of Apple's retail stores closed briefly so employees could attend the memorial. A video of the service is available on Apple's website.

Jobs is buried at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, the only non-denominational cemetery in Palo Alto.

Major media published commemorative works. ''Time'' published a commemorative issue for Jobs on October 8, 2011. The issues cover featured a portrait of Jobs, taken by Norman Seeff, in which he is sitting in the lotus position holding the original Macintosh computer, first published in ''Rolling Stone'' in January 1984. The issue marked the eighth time Jobs has been featured on the cover of ''Time''. The issue included a photographic essay by Diana Walker, a retrospective on Apple by Harry McCracken and Lev Grossman, and a six-page essay by Walter Isaacson. Isaacson's essay served as a preview of his biography, ''Steve Jobs''.

''Bloomberg Businessweek'' also published a commemorative issue. The cover of the magazine features Apple-style simplicity, with a black-and-white, up-close photo of Jobs and his years of birth and death. The issue was published without advertisements. It featured extensive essays by Steve Jurvetson, John Sculley, Sean Wisely, William Gibson, and Walter Isaacson.

Free software pioneer Richard Stallman dissented from the prevailing hagiographic views of Jobs to draw attention to the tight corporate control Apple exercised over consumer computers and handheld devices, how Apple restricted news reporters, and persistently violated privacy: "Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died". Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker asserted that "Jobs's sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him ... and ruthlessly refining it."

Although reporters wrote glowing elegies after Jobs died, ''Los Angeles Times'' media critic James Rainey reported that they "came courtesy of reporters who—after deadline and off the record—would tell stories about a company obsessed with secrecy to the point of paranoia. They remind us how Apple shut down a youthful fanboy blogger, punished a publisher that dared to print an unauthorized Jobs biography and repeatedly ran afoul of the most basic tenets of a free press."

Apple "has taken stances that, in my opinion, are outright hostile to the practice of journalism," said longtime Silicon Valley reporter Dan Gillmor. Under Jobs, Apple sued three "small fry" bloggers who reported tips about the company and its unreleased products and tried to use the courts to force them to reveal their sources. Under Jobs, Apple even sued a teenager, Nicholas Ciarelli, who wrote enthusiastic speculation about Apple products beginning at age 13. His popular blog, ThinkSecret, was a play on Apple's slogan "Think Different." Rainey wrote that Apple wanted to kill ThinkSecret as "It thought any leaks, even favorable ones, diluted the punch of its highly choreographed product launches with Jobs, in his iconic jeans and mock turtleneck outfit, as the star."

Honors and public recognition

After Apple's founding, Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When ''Time'' named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", the magazine published a long profile of Jobs as "the most famous maestro of the micro".

Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor), and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (also known as the ''Samuel S. Beard Award'') in 1987. On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by ''Fortune'' magazine. On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement, having previously been named Entrepreneur of the Decade 20 years earlier in 1989, by ''Inc. magazine''. On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by ''Fortune'' magazine.

In November 2010, Jobs was ranked No.17 on ''Forbes'': The World's Most Powerful People. In December 2010, the ''Financial Times'' named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.'". The Financial Times closed by rhetorically asking of this quote, "How wrong can you be."

At the time of his resignation, and again after his death, Jobs was widely described as a visionary, pioneer and genius

Reality distortion field

Apple's Bud Tribble coined the term "reality distortion field" in 1981, to describe Jobs' charisma and its effects on the developers working on the Macintosh project. Tribble claimed that the term came from ''Star Trek''. Since then the term has also been used to refer to perceptions of Jobs' keynote speeches.

The RDF was said by Andy Hertzfeld to be Steve Jobs' ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using a mix of charm, charisma, bravado, hyperbole, marketing, appeasement, and persistence. Although the subject of criticism, Jobs' so-called reality distortion field was also recognized as creating a sense that the impossible was possible. Once the term became widely known, it was often used in the technology press to describe Jobs' sway over the public, particuarly regarding new product announcements.

Portrayals and coverage in books, film, and theater

Books

''The Little Kingdom'' (1984) by Michael Moritz, documenting the founding of (then) Apple Computer.

''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs'' (2001), by Alan Deutschman

''iCon: Steve Jobs'' (2005), by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon

''Steve Jobs'' (2011), an authorized biography written by Walter Isaacson.

''Inside Apple'' (2012), a book by Adam Lashinsky that reveals the secret systems, tactics, and leadership strategies that allowed Steve Jobs and his company to work.

Documentaries

''The Machine That Changed the World'' Part 3 of this 1992 five-part documentary, called ''The Paperback Computer'', prominently featured Jobs and his role in the early days of Apple. ''Triumph of the Nerds'' a 1996 three-part documentary for PBS, about the rise of the home computer/personal computer. ''Nerds 2.0.1'' a 1998 three-part documentary for PBS, (and sequel to ''Triumph of the Nerds'') which chronicles the development of the Internet. ''iGenius: How Steve Jobs Changed the World'' a 2011 Discovery Channel documentary hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. ''Steve Jobs: One Last Thing'' a 2011 PBS documentary produced by Pioneer Productions. A slightly shortened and localized version of the show was broadcast in the United Kingdom the following day titled, ''Steve Jobs: iChanged the World'' on Channel 4. In February 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a 191-page file on Steve Jobs. The report was compiled during a 1991 background investigation of Jobs by the FBI after former president George H. W. Bush recommended his appointment to the President's Export Council. It consists of interviews with co-workers, friends, family members and even neighbors of Jobs.

Films

''Pirates of Silicon Valley'' a 1999 TNT film which chronicles the rise of Apple and Microsoft from the early 1970s to 1997. Jobs is portrayed by Noah Wyle.

Theater

''The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs'' - The Public Theater, New York City, 2012, starring Mike Daisey.

References

Further reading

Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN 0-385-48684-7. Chapter 28

External links

"Thoughts on Flash" by Steve Jobs, April, 2010.

Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs A 48 minute video on Steve Jobs by Bloomberg

Steve Jobs Profile at ''Forbes''

Steve Jobs remembrance notes from the community. The only remaining tribute on the Apple website..

Federal Bureau of Investigation dossier on Steven Paul Jobs.

Articles

Interviews

Steve Jobs in 1994: The Rolling Stone Interview, ''Rolling Stone'' 1994, republished January 17, 2011. Archived URL April 20, 1995. The Seed of Apple's Innovation, ''BusinessWeek'' October 12, 2004. How Big Can Apple Get?, ''Fortune'' February 21, 2005. ''Newsweek'', October 15, 2006.

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (video and transcript of on stage interview), AllThingsD, May 30, 2007.

Videotaped Deposition of Steven P. Jobs in front of the Securities and Exchange Commission, March 18, 2008

Interview with Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, Jobs's biological father, by Mohannad Al-Haj Ali, published in ''Al Hayat'' and reprinted by Ya Libnan, February 28, 2011

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name	Larry Page
birth name	Lawrence "Larry" Page
birth date	March 26, 1973
birth place	East Lansing, Michigan
residence	San Francisco, California, U.S.
nationality	American
occupation	CEO of Google, Inc.
alma mater	East Lansing High School University of Michigan Stanford University
known for	Co-founder of Google, Inc.
networth	US$19.8 billion (2011)
spouse	Lucinda Southworth
hometown	East Lansing, Michigan
website
signature	Larry Page google signature.svg
signature alt	Larry Page }}

Lawrence "Larry" Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Sergey Brin, is best known as the co-founder of Google. As of April 4, 2011, he is also the Chief Executive Officer of Google, as announced on January 20, 2011. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $19.8 billion.

Early life and education

Page was born in East Lansing, Michigan. His father, Carl Page, earned a Ph.D. in computer science in 1965 when the field was in its infancy, and is considered a "pioneer in computer science and artificial intelligence." Both he and Page's mother were computer science professors at Michigan State University. Page is Jewish on his mother's side, and was raised without religion.

Page attended the Okemos Montessori School (now called Montessori Radmoor) in Okemos, Michigan from 1975 to 1979, and graduated from East Lansing High School in 1991. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering from the University of Michigan with honors and a Masters degree in computer science from Stanford University. While at the University of Michigan, "Page created an inkjet printer made of Lego bricks" (actually a line plotter), served as the president of the Eta Kappa Nu in Fall 1994, and was a member of the 1993 "Maize & Blue" University of Michigan Solar team.

During an interview, Page recalled his childhood, noting that his house "was usually a mess, with computers and ''Popular Science'' magazines all over the place." His attraction to computers started when he was six years old when he got to "play with the stuff lying around." He became the "first kid in his elementary school to turn in an assignment from a word processor." His older brother also taught him to take things apart, and before long he was taking "everything in his house apart to see how it worked." He said that "from a very early age, I also realized I wanted to invent things. So I became really interested in technology...and business . . . probably from when I was 12, I knew I was going to start a company eventually."

After enrolling for a Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry Page was in search of a dissertation theme and considered exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph. His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pursue this idea, which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got". Page then focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind). In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student.

John Battelle, co-founder of ''Wired'' magazine, wrote of Page that he had reasoned that the "entire Web was loosely based on the premise of citation – after all, what is a link but a citation? If he could devise a method to count and qualify each backlink on the Web, as Page puts it 'the Web would become a more valuable place'." Battelle further described how Page and Brin began working together on the project:

:"At the time Page conceived of BackRub, the Web comprised an estimated 10 million documents, with an untold number of links between them. The computing resources required to crawl such a beast were well beyond the usual bounds of a student project. Unaware of exactly what he was getting into, Page began building out his crawler.

:"The idea's complexity and scale lured Brin to the job. A polymath who had jumped from project to project without settling on a thesis topic, he found the premise behind BackRub fascinating. "I talked to lots of research groups" around the school, Brin recalls, "and this was the most exciting project, both because it tackled the Web, which represents human knowledge, and because I liked Larry."

Brin and Page originally met in March 1995, during a spring orientation of new computer Ph.D. candidates. Brin, who had already been in the program for two years, was assigned to show some students, including Page, around campus, and they later became good friends.

To convert the backlink data gathered by BackRub's web crawler into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm, and realized that it could be used to build a search engine far superior to existing ones. It relied on a new kind of technology that analyzed the relevance of the back links that connected one Web page to another. In August 1996, the initial version of Google was made available, still on the Stanford University Web site.

Business

In 1998, Brin and Page founded Google, Inc. Page ran Google as co-president along with Brin until 2001 when they hired Eric Schmidt as Chairman and CEO of Google. In January 2011 Google announced that Page would replace Schmidt as CEO in April the same year. Both Page and Brin earn an annual compensation of one dollar. On April 4, 2011, Page officially became the chief executive officer of Google, while Schmidt stepped down to become executive chairman.

Personal life

Page married Lucinda Southworth at Richard Branson's Caribbean island, Necker Island in 2007. Southworth is a research scientist and sister of actress and model Carrie Southworth. He has one child.

Other interests

Page is an active investor in alternative energy companies, such as Tesla Motors, which developed the Tesla Roadster, a range battery electric vehicle. He continues to be committed to renewable energy technology, and with the help of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, promotes the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternative energy investments.

Brin and Page are the executive producers of the 2007 film ''Broken Arrows''.

Awards and recognition

''PC Magazine'' has praised Google as among the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."

In 2002, Page, along with Sergey Brin, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...." And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering," and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers...." He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004. In 2005, Brin and Page were elected Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2002 the World Economic Forum named Page a Global Leader for Tomorrow and in 2004 the X PRIZE chose Page as a trustee for their board.

In 2004, Page and Brin were named "Persons of the Week" by ''ABC World News Tonight''. Page received an honorary doctorate from the University of Michigan in 2009 during graduation commencement ceremonies.

In 2011, he was ranked 24th on the ''Forbes'' list of the world’s billionaires and as the 11th richest person in the United States.

References

External links

Google Corporate Information: Management

America's Best Leaders

Profile at ''BBC News''

Larry Page's Alumni Profile Composite

Channel 4 News: "Google's Vision", May 23, 2006

"The Searchmeisters" – profile on Page and Brin from the ''B'nai B'rith Magazine'' (Spring 2006)

Video: Google Founders – Charlie Rose interview from 2001 (14 min)

On the Origins of Google

Why you should ignore VCs, Larry Page speaks at Stanford

San Francisco Chronicle, Google Co-Founder's Search Ends

The Page Girl

Category:1973 births Category:American billionaires Category:American computer businesspeople Category:American computer scientists Category:American Jews Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Category:Google employees Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:People from East Lansing, Michigan Category:Silicon Valley people Category:Stanford University alumni Category:TR35 winners Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:WEF YGL honorees

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Name	Sergey Brin
Birth name	Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin
Birth date	August 21, 1973
Birth place	Moscow, RSFSR, Soviet Union
Residence	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Nationality	American
Ethnicity	Russian Jew
Alma mater	University of Maryland (B.S. 1993) Stanford University (M.S. 1995)
Occupation	Computer scientist, internet entrepreneur
Known for	Co-founder of Google
Salary	$1 (2009)
Networth	US$19.8 billion (2011)
Spouse	Anne Wojcicki
Children	1
Website	stanford.edu/~sergey
Signature	Sergey Brin google signature.svg
Signature alt	Sergey Brin }}

Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin (; born August 21, 1973) is a Russian-born American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google, one of the largest internet companies. , his personal wealth is estimated to be $19.8 billion.

Brin immigrated to the United States from Russia at the age of six. He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of Maryland, following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps by studying mathematics, as well as computer science. After graduation, he moved to Stanford to acquire a Ph.D in computer science. There he met Larry Page, with whom he later became friends. They crammed their dormitory room with inexpensive computers and applied Brin’s data mining system to build a superior search engine. The program became popular at Stanford and they suspended their PhD studies to start up Google in a rented garage.

''The Economist'' magazine referred to Brin as an "Enlightenment Man", and someone who believes that "knowledge is always good, and certainly always better than ignorance", a philosophy that is summed up by Google’s motto of making all the world’s information "universally accessible and useful" and "Don't be evil".

Early life and education

Sergey Brin was born in Moscow to Jewish parents, the son of Michael Brin and Eugenia Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University. His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother is a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Childhood in the Soviet Union

In 1979, when Brin was six, his family felt compelled to emigrate to the United States. In an interview with Mark Malseed, author of ''The Google Story'', Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college". Although an official policy of anti-Semitism didn't exist in the Soviet Union, Brin claims Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities; "Jews were excluded from the physics departments, in particular..." Michael Brin therefore changed his major to mathematics where he received nearly straight As. He said, "Nobody would even consider me for graduate school because I was Jewish." The Brin family lived in a three-room, 30 square meter (350 square foot) apartment in central Moscow, which they also shared with Sergey's paternal grandmother. Sergey told Malseed, "I've known for a long time that my father wasn't able to pursue the career he wanted", but Sergey only picked up the details years later after they had settled in the United States. He learned how, in 1977, after his father returned from a mathematics conference in Warsaw, Poland, he announced that it was time for the family to emigrate. "We cannot stay here any more", he told his wife and mother. At the conference, he was able to "mingle freely with colleagues from the United States, France, England and Germany, and discovered that his intellectual brethren in the West were 'not monsters.'" He added, "I was the only one in the family who decided it was really important to leave...."

Sergey's mother was less willing to leave their home in Moscow, where they had spent their entire lives. Malseed writes, "For Genia, the decision ultimately came down to Sergey. While her husband admits he was thinking as much about his own future as his son's, for her, 'it was 80/20' about Sergey." They formally applied for their exit visa in September 1978, and as a result his father "was promptly fired". For related reasons, his mother also had to leave her job. For the next eight months, without any steady income, they were forced to take on temporary jobs as they waited, afraid their request would be denied as it was for many refuseniks. During this time his parents shared responsibility for looking after him and his father taught himself computer programming. In May 1979, they were granted their official exit visas and were allowed to leave the country.

At an interview in October, 2000, Brin said, "I know the hard times that my parents went through there, and am very thankful that I was brought to the States." A decade earlier, in the summer of 1990, a few weeks before his 17th birthday, his father led a group of gifted high school math students, including Sergey, on a two-week exchange program to the Soviet Union. "As Sergey recalls, the trip awakened his childhood fear of authority" and he remembers that his first "impulse on confronting Soviet oppression had been to throw pebbles at a police car." Malseed adds, "On the second day of the trip, while the group toured a sanitarium in the countryside near Moscow, Sergey took his father aside, looked him in the eye and said, 'Thank you for taking us all out of Russia.'"

Education in the United States

Brin attended grade school at Paint Branch Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland, but he received further education at home; his father, a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland, nurtured his interest in mathematics and his family helped him retain his Russian-language skills. In September 1990, after having attended Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, Brin enrolled in the University of Maryland, College Park to study computer science and mathematics, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in May 1993 with honors.

Brin began his graduate study in Computer Science at Stanford University on a graduate fellowship from the National Science Foundation. In 1993, he interned at Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica. He is on leave from his Ph.D. studies at Stanford.

Search engine development

During an orientation for new students at Stanford, he met Larry Page. In a recent interview for ''The Economist'', Brin jokingly said "We're both kind of obnoxious." They seemed to disagree on most subjects. But after spending time together, they "became intellectual soul-mates and close friends". Brin's focus was on developing data mining systems while Page's was in extending "the concept of inferring the importance of a research paper from its citations in other papers." Together, the pair authored what is widely considered their seminal contribution, a paper entitled "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine."

Combining their ideas, they "crammed their dormitory room with cheap computers" and tested their new search engine designs on the web. Their project grew quickly enough "to cause problems for Stanford's computing infrastructure." But they realized they had succeeded in creating a superior engine for searching the web and suspended their PhD studies to work more on their system.

As Mark Malseed wrote, "Soliciting funds from faculty members, family and friends, Sergey and Larry scraped together enough to buy some servers and rent that famous garage in Menlo Park. ... [soon after], Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a $100,000 check to “Google, Inc.” The only problem was, “Google, Inc.” did not yet exist—the company hadn’t yet been incorporated. For two weeks, as they handled the paperwork, the young men had nowhere to deposit the money."

''The Economist'' magazine describes Brin's approach to life, like Page's, as based on a vision summed up by Google's motto, "of making all the world's information 'universally accessible and useful.'" Others have compared their vision to that of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of modern printing: :"In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the mechanical printing press, printing Bibles for mass consumption. The technology allowed for books and manuscripts – originally replicated by hand – to be printed at a much faster rate, thus spreading knowledge and helping to usher in the European Renaissance. . . Google has done a similar job."

The comparison was likewise noted by the authors of ''The Google Story'': "Not since Gutenberg . . . has any new invention empowered individuals, and transformed access to information, as profoundly as Google."

Not long after the two "cooked up their new engine for web searches, they began thinking about information that is today beyond the web", such as digitizing books, and expanding health information.

Personal life

In May 2007, Brin married Anne Wojcicki in The Bahamas. Wojcicki is a biotech analyst and a 1996 graduate of Yale University with a B.S. in biology. She has an active interest in health information, and together she and Brin are developing new ways to improve access to it. As part of their efforts, they have brainstormed with leading researchers about the human genome project. "Brin instinctively regards genetics as a database and computing problem. So does his wife, who co-founded the firm, 23andMe", which lets people analyze and compare their own genetic makeup (consisting of 23 pairs of chromosomes). In a recent announcement at Google’s Zeitgeist conference, he said he hoped that some day everyone would learn their genetic code in order to help doctors, patients, and researchers analyze the data and try to repair bugs.

Brin's mother, Eugenia, has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In 2008, he decided to make a donation to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, where his mother is being treated. Brin used the services of 23andMe and discovered that although Parkinson's is generally not hereditary, both he and his mother possess a mutation of the LRRK2 gene (G2019S) that puts the likelihood of his developing Parkinson's in later years between 20 and 80%. When asked whether ignorance was not bliss in such matters, he stated that his knowledge means that he can now take measures to ward off the disease. An editorial in ''The Economist'' magazine states that "Mr Brin regards his mutation of LRRK2 as a bug in his personal code, and thus as no different from the bugs in computer code that Google’s engineers fix every day. By helping himself, he can therefore help others as well. He considers himself lucky. ... But Mr. Brin was making a much bigger point. Isn’t knowledge always good, and certainly always better than ignorance?"

Censorship of Google in China

Remembering his youth and his family's reasons for leaving the Soviet Union, he "agonized over Google’s decision to appease the communist government of China by allowing it to censor search engine results", but decided that the Chinese would still be better off than without having Google available. He explained his reasoning to ''Fortune'' magazine:

:"We felt that by participating there, and making our services more available, even if not to the 100 percent that we ideally would like, that it will be better for Chinese web users, because ultimately they would get more information, though not quite all of it."

On January 12, 2010, Google reported a large cyber attack on its computers and corporate infrastructure that began a month earlier, which included accessing numerous Gmail accounts and the theft of Google's intellectual property. After the attack was determined to have originated in China, the company stated that it would no longer agree to censor its search engine in China and may exit the country altogether. The ''New York Times'' reported that "a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, but that the attack also targeted 20 other large companies in the finance, technology, media and chemical sectors." It was later reported that the attack included "one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide."

In late March, 2010, it officially discontinued its China-based search engine while keeping its uncensored Hong Kong site in operation. In a similar move, domain registrar Go Daddy Inc. also told Congress it will be cutting back due to new Chinese requirements for confidential information about their registrants. Speaking for Google, Brin stated during an interview, "One of the reasons I am glad we are making this move in China is that the China situation was really emboldening other countries to try and implement their own firewalls." During another interview with ''Spiegel'', he added, "For us it has always been a discussion about how we can best fight for openness on the Internet. We believe that this is the best thing that we can do for preserving the principles of the openness and freedom of information on the Internet."

While only a few large companies so far pledged their support for the move, many Internet "freedom proponents are cheering the move," and it is "winning it praise in the U.S." from lawmakers. Senator Byron Dorgan stated that "Google's decision is a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information." And Congressman Bob Goodlatte said, "I applaud Google for its courageous step to stop censoring search results on Google.cn. Google has drawn a line in the sand and is shining a light on the very dark area of individual liberty restrictions in China." From the business perspective, many recognize that the move is likely to affect Google's profits: "Google is going to pay a heavy price for its move, which is why it deserves praise for refusing to censor its service in China." ''The New Republic'' adds that "Google seems to have arrived at the same link that was obvious to Andrei Sakharov: the one between science and freedom," referring to the move as "heroism."

Awards and recognition

In 2002, Brin, along with Larry Page, was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100, as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

In 2003, both Brin and Page received an honorary MBA from IE Business School "for embodying the entrepreneurial spirit and lending momentum to the creation of new businesses...". And in 2004, they received the Marconi Foundation Prize, the "Highest Award in Engineering", and were elected Fellows of the Marconi Foundation at Columbia University. "In announcing their selection, John Jay Iselin, the Foundation's president, congratulated the two men for their invention that has fundamentally changed the way information is retrieved today." They joined a "select cadre of 32 of the world's most influential communications technology pioneers..."

In November 2009, ''Forbes magazine'' decided Brin and Larry Page were the fifth most powerful people in the world. Earlier that same year, in February, Brin was inducted into the National Academy of Engineering, which is "among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer ... [and] honors those who have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice...". He was selected specifically, "for leadership in development of rapid indexing and retrieval of relevant information from the World Wide Web."

In their "Profiles" of Fellows, the National Science Foundation included a number of earlier awards: :"he has been a featured speaker at the World Economic Forum and the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. ... ''PC Magazine'' has praised Google [of] the Top 100 Web Sites and Search Engines (1998) and awarded Google the Technical Excellence Award, for Innovation in Web Application Development in 1999. In 2000, Google earned a Webby Award, a People's Voice Award for technical achievement, and in 2001, was awarded Outstanding Search Service, Best Image Search Engine, Best Design, Most Webmaster Friendly Search Engine, and Best Search Feature at the Search Engine Watch Awards."

According to ''Forbes'' he and Larry Page are currently tied as the 24th richest person in the world with a personal wealth of US$19.8 billion in 2011.

Other interests

Brin is working on other, more personal projects that reach beyond Google. For example, he and Page are trying to help solve the world’s energy and climate problems at Google’s philanthropic arm Google.org, which invests in the alternative energy industry to find wider sources of renewable energy. The company acknowledges that its founders want "to solve really big problems using technology."

In October 2010, for example, they invested in a major offshore wind power development to assist the East coast power grid, which may eventually become the first "offshore wind farm" in the United States. A week earlier they introduced a car that, with "artificial intelligence," can drive itself using video cameras and radar sensors. In the future, drivers of cars with similar sensors would have fewer accidents. These safer vehicles could therefore be built lighter and require less fuel consumption.

They are trying to get companies to create innovative solutions to increasing the world's energy supply. He is an investor in Tesla Motors, which has developed the Tesla Roadster, a range battery electric vehicle.

Brin has appeared on television shows and many documentaries, including ''Charlie Rose'', CNBC, and CNN. In 2004, he and Larry Page were named "Persons of the Week" by ''ABC World News Tonight''. In January 2005 he was nominated to be one of the World Economic Forum's "Young Global Leaders". He and Page are also the executive producers of the 2007 film ''Broken Arrows''.

In June 2008, Brin invested $4.5 million in Space Adventures, the Virginia-based space tourism company. His investment will serve as a deposit for a reservation on one of Space Adventures' proposed flights in 2011. So far, Space Adventures has sent seven tourists into space.

He and Page co-own a customized Boeing 767–200 and a Dornier Alpha Jet, and pay $1.4 million a year to house them and two Gulfstream V jets owned by Google executives at Moffett Federal Airfield. The aircraft have had scientific equipment installed by NASA to allow experimental data to be collected in flight.

Brin is a member of AmBAR, a networking organization for Russian-speaking business professionals (both expatriates and immigrants) in the United States. He has made many speaking appearances.

Quotations

"When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley."

"We came up with the notion that not all web pages are created equal. People are — but not web pages."

"Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you’re able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power."

References

External links

List of scientific publications by Sergey Brin

Video of Brin giving a lecture at UC Berkeley – Mentions Wikipedia and discusses development of search engines, Google and its evolution, Q&A; (Fall 2005)

Profile at ''BBC News''

→ On the Origins of Google

Sergey Brin's Blog

Interviews

Video talk with Brin and Page "Inside the Google machine" – Feb. 2004, 20 min.

Linux Journal interview – August 31, 2000

Net Café Television Interview – October 6, 2000. Interview starts around 18 minutes and 15 seconds in.

Search Engine Watch interview – October 16, 2003

Time Magazine Podcast about Google and its founders

"The Searchmeisters" – profile on Brin and Page from the ''B'nai B'rith Magazine'' (Spring 2006)

Video → Google Founders – Charlie Rose interview from 2001 (14 min)

Articles

Forbes.com: Fortunes That Roared In 2004

Momentmag.com: The Story of Sergey Brin

Category:1973 births Category:American billionaires Category:American computer scientists Category:American Jews Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Google employees Category:Living people Category:Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People from Moscow Category:People from Prince George's County, Maryland Category:People from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Russian Jews Category:American people of Russian descent Category:Russian businesspeople Category:Russian inventors Category:Silicon Valley people Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States Category:Stanford University alumni Category:University of Maryland, College Park alumni Category:WEF YGL honorees Category:TR35 winners

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{{Infobox officeholder |name = Narendra Modiનરેન્દ્ર મોદી |image = Narendra Modi in surat.jpg |imagesize = |alt = Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, India, speaks during the welcome lunch at the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit 2008 in New Delhi |birth_date = September 17, 1950 |birth_place = Vadnagar, Gujarat, India |residence = Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India |death_date = |death_place = |constituency = Maninagar |order = |office = Chief Minister of Gujarat |governor = Dr. Kamla Beniwal |term_start = 7 October 2001 |term_end = |predecessor = Keshubhai Patel |successor = Incumbent |party = Bharatiya Janata Party |spouse = |children = |alma_mater = Gujarat University |education = [M.S (Political Science)] ) is the current Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat.

He was born in a middle class family in Vadnagar. Modi was the third of six children born to Damodardas Mulchand Modi and his wife, Heeraben. He is a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) since childhood, and also an active politician since early in life. He holds a master's degree in political science. In 1998, he was chosen by L. K. Advani, the leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), to direct the election campaign in Gujarat as well as Himachal Pradesh.

He became Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2001, promoted to the office at a time when his predecessor Keshubhai Patel had resigned, following the defeat of BJP in the by-elections. His tenure as chief minister of Gujarat began on 7 October 2001, and he is the longest serving Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. In July 2007 he became the longest serving Chief Minister in Gujarat's history when he had been in power for 2063 days continuously. He was elected again for a third term on 23 December 2007 in the state elections, which he had cast as a "referendum on his rule"..

Personal life

Modi was born in a middle class family in Vadnagar in Mehsana district of what was then Bombay State, India. During the Indo-Pak war in the mid sixties, even as a young boy, he volunteered to serve the soldiers in transit at railway stations. As a young man, he joined the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, a student organization and was involved in the anti-corruption ''Nav Nirmāṇ'' ("Reconstruction") Movement. After working as a full time organizer for the organization, he was later nominated as its representative in the Bharatiya Janata Party. As a teenager Modi used to run a tea stall with his brother. Modi completed his schooling in Vadnagar. He earned a masters degree in political science from Gujarat University.

Early activism and politics

Modi was a ''Pracharak'' in the RSS during his university years. He took up the challenging task of energizing the party cadres in right earnest. In partnership with Shankersinh Vaghela, Modi set about creating a strong cadre base in Gujarat. In the initial period, Vaghela was seen as a mass leader, while Modi was recognised as a master strategist.

The party started gaining political mileage and formed a coalition government at the centre in April 1990. This partnership fell apart within a few months, but the BJP came to power with a two-thirds majority on its own in Gujarat in 1995. During this period, Modi was entrusted with the responsibility of organizing two crucial national events, the Somnath to Ayodhya Rath Yatra (a political rally through India on a converted Toyota van) of L.K. Advani and a similar march from Kanyakumari (the southernmost part of India) to Kashmir in the North. After the exit of Shankarsingh Vaghela from the BJP, Keshubhai Patel was made Chief Minister while Narendra Modi was sent to New Delhi as a General Secretary of the Party.

In 1995, Modi was appointed the National Secretary of the party and given the charge of five major states in India. In 1998, he was promoted as the General Secretary (Organization), a post he held until October 2001. In 2001, Narendra Modi was chosen by the party to be the Chief Minister of Gujarat after the removal of chief minister Keshubhai Patel.

Tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat

Personality

Modi is known for leading a frugal lifestyle. He has a personal staff of just three. He is known to be a workaholic Chief Minister and an introvert. He ordered the demolition of many Hindu temples that were built without proper government sanction which earned him the ire of VHP He is a crowd puller as a speaker. Modi has also tried to turn his image from an Hindu Nationalist politician to an image of able administrator. He wears business suits and is improving his command over the English language.

Awards and recognitions

Modi was awarded ''Gujarat Ratna'' by ''Shri Poona Gujarati Bandhu Samaj'' at Ganesh Kala Krida Manch on celebration of centenary year.

Development of Gujarat

As a Chief Minister, Modi started various 'yojanas' or plans. This includes: Panchamrut Yojana, a five-pronged strategy for an integrated development of the state,

Sujalam Sufalam, a scheme to create a grid of water resources in Gujarat in an innovative step towards water conservation and its appropriate utilization.

Krishi Mahotsav – agricultural research labs for the land

Chiranjeevi Yojana – To reduce infant mortality rate

Matru Vandana – Providing preventive and curative services under the Reproductive and Child Health Programme

Beti Bachao – Campaign against female infanticide to improve sex ratio

Jyotigram Yojana – Provide electricity to every village

Karmayogi Abhiyan – To educate and train government employees

Kanya Kelavani Yojana – To encourage female literacy and education

Balbhog Yojana – Midday meal scheme for students to encourage school attendance from poor backgrounds.

Vibrant Gujarat

Vibrant Gujarat is a biennial Global Investors' Summit held by the Government of Gujarat in Gujarat, India. The event is aimed at bringing together business leaders, investors, corporations, thought leaders, policy and opinion makers; the summit is advertised as a platform to understand and explore business opportunities in the State of Gujarat. the event has been held continuously since 2003.

Gujarat earthquake

The biggest challenge which he had to face when he took over as the Chief Minister, was the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the areas affected by the massive Gujarat Earthquake of January 2001.

Gujarat violence

On 27 February 2002, a train was burned by a mob of Muslim extremists in the town of Godhra leading to 59 deaths, most of them Hindu pilgrims and activists returning from the holy city of Ayodhya. Riots broke out in the state after rumours spread that it was caused by Muslims, leading to 1180 deaths, many of them Muslims. Modi administration was accused of inaction over the riots and for encouraging them. As an aftermath of the riots, there were calls for Modi to resign from his position as chief minister of Gujarat. The opposition parties stalled the national parliament over the issue. Even Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP), allies of the BJP, asked for Modi's resignation. Modi submitted his resignation to the Governor and recommended the dissolution of the 10th Gujarat Legislative Assembly. In the following state re-elections the BJP, led by Modi, won 127 seats in the 182-member assembly.

In April 2009, the Supreme Court of India appointed a special team of investigators to look into the role Modi had played in the alleged anti-Muslim conspiracy. The team was appointed in response to the complaint of Jakia Jafri, the widow of ex-Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, who was murdered in the riots. In December 2010, a Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) in its report to the Supreme Court seeking answers pertaining to the Ehsan Jafri case, submitted that they had found no evidence against Narendra Modi.

However in February 2011, the ''Times of India'' reported that a confidential report from the SIT indicted Modi on several counts of alleged complicity in the Gujarat riots of 2002. Most other sources have noted that the SIT report does not indict Modi for the riots due to lack of evidence. ''The Indian Express'' too said the report did not find any Modi involvement in the violence, though it did accuse him of watering down the seriousness of the situation. According to ''the Hindu'', the report not only found that Modi tried to water down the seriousness of the situation, but Modi also implicitly justified the killings of Muslims, and failed to condemn the attacks on them. The Bharatiya Janata Party demanded an investigation into the publication of the report, claiming the leak was politically motivated.

The apex court refused to pass any order on the case and referred it to the Ahmedabad magistrate for a decision.

2007 elections

Modi made a speech at Mangrol in which he justified the alleged fake encounter of Sohrabuddin Sheikh, During the election campaign In response to Sonia Gandhi's speech calling him a "merchant of death", and referred to Sohrabuddin's killing. For this speech the Election Commission of India, a constitutional body governing election proceedings in India, cautioned Modi as it considered it as indulging in an activity which may aggravate existing differences between different communities. Modi won the election and continued his post as the Chief Minister Of Gujarat.Mr.Narendra Modi has got clear majority with 122 seats out of 182 total assembly seats.

Conflicts with Governor Kamla Beniwal

On 25 August 2011 Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal appointed Justice R A Mehta to the post of Lokyukta of Gujarat, a critical anti-corruption post that had been lying vacant since 2003. Justice R A Mehta was recommended for the post by the Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court in June. Since Governor Beniwal had made this decision without consulting and getting the approval of the chief minister and his council of ministers, the action angered Narendra Modi and his BJP party.

This marked the beginning of a strained relationship between Modi and the Governor. On 25 September 2011, Narendra Modi accused the Governor of running a parallel government in the state supported by the Congress. He demanded that she be recalled back. He also later accused her of delaying the progress of bills by not passing them.

The decision of the governor in the appointment of R A Mehta was challenged in the high court by the Modi government. The two member high court bench gave a split verdict on 10 October 2011. Later, a third member upheld the governor's decision in January 2012. This was a major setback to Modi.

Foreign visits

As the Chief Minister of the Gujarat State, to attract foreign investment in the state, Narendra Modi has made visits to foreign countries, including China and Singapore.

Narendra Modi made his first China visit in 2007 to invite investors Vibrant Gujarat Global Investor Summit, and second visit in November 2011. One month after the second visit to China, the Chinese Government released 13 Diamond traders from India jailed by the Shenzhen Customs, which the Chief Minister described as the consequece of his ''diplomatic efforts and statesmanship''.

In 2005 Narendra Modi was denied of diplomatic visa to the United States, in addition to this visa denial, he was also revoked from his already granted B-1/B-2 visa.

Sadbhavna Mission

In the late 2011-early 2012 Narandra Modi had a series of fasts named as ''Sadbhavna Mission''. The mission started on 17 September 2011 in Ahmedabad with 3 day fast with a view to strengthen the atmosphere of peace, unity and harmony in the state. He observed total 36 fasts in 26 districts, 8 cities including Ahmedabad.

Views and opinions

Modi's position on terrorism

On 18 July 2006 Modi delivered a speech criticizing Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh "for his reluctance to revive anti-terror legislations" like the Prevention of Terrorism Act. He asked the Centre to empower states to invoke tougher laws in the wake of the blasts in Mumbai. Quoting Modi:

Narendra Modi has frequently commented that if the BJP came to power at the Centre, they will honour the 2004 Supreme Court judgement to hang Afzal Guru. Afzal was convicted of terrorism in the 2001 Indian Parliament attack in 2004 by the Supreme Court of India and is in Tihar Jail.

On account of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks, on Thursday 27 November, Narendra Modi held a meeting to discuss waterfront security along the coastline. The meeting decided to ask the Central government to urgently sanction the following:

Increase the number of police stations along the coast to 50 (from 10)

Increase the number of police to 1500 from 250

30 modern high-speed surveillance boats.

The 30 coastal boats, under construction at Goa's ship-building yard, will have the capacity to run at the speed of 25 nautical miles per hour. These are being manufactured under the Centre's Rs 58-crore grant for coastal security.

Views on criticism of Modi's governance

In 2003, when Narendra Modi was asked about the conflict of his dreams for Gujarat's future with international criticism of his past activities, Modi said:

Modi's decision to link Gujarat's violence with the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US drew criticism from some observers, who contrasted it with the then Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani's unpleasant apology for Gujarat in London a year ago.

Responding to The Guardian's criticism in this matter, Modi replied:

References

See also

Chief Minister

Gujarat

Bhartiya Janata Party

External links

; Official

@narendramodi Official & verified Twitter Account

Narendra Modi ''Official website''

Narendra Modi ''Personal blog''

; Other

Profile at ''BBC News''

at ''The Caravan Magazine 18,000-word profile that touches all aspect of Narendra Modi's life''

Category:1950 births Category:Living people Category:Gujarati people Category:Chief Ministers of Gujarat Category:Gujarat University alumni Category:Indian vegetarians Category:Bharatiya Janata Party politicians Category:Personae non gratae Category:People from Mehsana district Category:Indian Hindus

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