private coeducational institution of higher learning at Stanford, California, U.S. (adjacent to Palo Alto), one of the most prestigious in the country. The university was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (Stanford, Leland) and his wife, Jane (née Lathrop), and was dedicated to their deceased only child, Leland, Jr.; it opened in 1891. The university campus largely occupies Stanford's former Palo Alto farm. The buildings, conceived by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted (Olmsted, Frederick Law) and designed by architect Charles Allerton Coolidge, are of soft buff sandstone in a style similar to the old California mission architecture, being long and low with wide colonnades, open arches, and red-tiled roofs. The campus sustained heavy damage from earthquakes in 1906 and 1989 but was rebuilt each time. The university was coeducational from the outset, though between 1899 and 1933 enrollment of women students was limited to 500.

Stanford maintains overseas study centres in France, Italy, Germany, England, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Japan, and Russia; about one-third of its undergraduates study at one of these sites for one or two academic quarters. A study and internship program is also offered in Washington, D.C. The university offers a broad range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs in schools of law, medicine, education, engineering, business, earth sciences, and humanities and sciences. Total enrollment exceeds 14,000.

Stanford is a national centre for research and is home to more than 120 research institutes. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace—founded in 1919 by Stanford alumnus (and future U.S. president) Herbert Hoover (Hoover, Herbert) to preserve documents related to World War I—contains more than 1.6 million volumes and 50 million documents dealing with 20th-century international relations and public policy. The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ( SLAC), established in 1962, is one of the world's premier laboratories for research in particle physics. Other noted research facilities include the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Institute for International Studies, and the Stanford Humanities Center.

The Stanford Medical Center, completed on the campus in 1959, is one of the top teaching hospitals in the country; it has more than 850 beds. Other notable campus locations are the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts (housing the university museum) and its adjacent sculpture garden, containing works by Auguste Rodin (Rodin, Auguste), and Hanna House (1937), designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright (Wright, Frank Lloyd). Adjacent to the campus is the Stanford Research Park (1951), one of the world's principal locations for the development of electronics and computer technology. The Hopkins Marine Station is maintained by the university at Pacific Grove on Monterey Bay, and a biological field station is located near the campus at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.

Stanford's distinguished faculty has included many Nobel laureates, including Milton Friedman (Friedman, Milton) (economics), Arthur Kornberg (Kornberg, Arthur) (biochemistry), and Burton Richter (Richter, Burton) (physics). Among the university's many notable alumni are writers John Steinbeck (Steinbeck, John) and Ken Kesey (Kesey, Ken), painter Robert Motherwell (Motherwell, Robert), U.S. Supreme Court Justices William Hubbs Rehnquist (Rehnquist, William) and Sandra Day O'Connor (O'Connor, Sandra Day), astronaut Sally Ride (Ride, Sally), and golfer Tiger Woods (Woods, Tiger).