50 Fun Facts About Columbia University

Which Midtown Manhattan landmark stands on land that Columbia University owned until 1985?

Rockefeller Center rose on land that Columbia leased out in 1928 and that had once held America's first public botanical garden. The university finally sold the site for $400 million.

Which future US president graduated from Columbia University in 1983 with a degree in political science?

Barack Obama transferred to Columbia as a junior in 1981 after two years at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He lived off campus on West 109th Street.

Which Hollywood studio's logo did former Columbia student Howard Dietz base on his old university's mascot?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer inherited its lion from Goldwyn Pictures, where Dietz picked the animal in 1916 as a tribute to Columbia, whose teams are still called the Lions.

Which 1990s sitcom filmed the outside of Tom's Restaurant, a diner in a Columbia University building?

Seinfeld used the diner's exterior as Monk's Café, later cropping the neon sign so that only the word Restaurant showed. The diner sits on the ground floor of Columbia's Armstrong Hall.

Which 1984 comedy filmed scenes at Columbia University on condition that the school was never named on screen?

Ghostbusters used Columbia's Havemeyer Hall as Weaver Hall, the fictional home of the lab its three scientists are thrown out of.

Which American honor for journalism and the arts has Columbia University administered since 1917?

The Pulitzer Prize was set up by the will of newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, whose bequest also paid for Columbia's journalism school. The awards are still handed out each spring.

Which Founding Father attended Columbia's colonial forerunner and has a campus hall named after him?

Hamilton enrolled in 1773 and, two years later, held off an angry mob long enough for the college's Loyalist president to escape. Hamilton Hall carries his name and his statue.

Which World War II general served as president of Columbia University from 1948 until 1953?

Dwight Eisenhower took up oil painting while running Columbia and spent part of his term on leave as NATO's first supreme commander. Faculty came to see him as an absentee president.

Which future New York Yankees star studied engineering at Columbia University before signing in 1923?

Lou Gehrig spent two years at Columbia and played fullback for its football team. He was barred from college sports as a freshman after playing minor-league games for Hartford.

What was Columbia University called when it was founded in 1754?

King's College reopened after the Revolution in 1784 with the new name Columbia College, chosen by the state legislature to show its support for the new Republic.

What occupied the site of Columbia University's main campus before the college bought it in 1892?

A mental asylum, the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, filled the land with orchards, vegetable gardens and a working farm. One of its buildings still stands on campus as Buell Hall.

In which New York City neighborhood has Columbia University's main campus stood since the 1890s?

Morningside Heights became home when president Seth Low moved the campus up from 49th Street, wanting one site where every discipline could be taught. The main campus covers 32 acres.

Which women's college was founded in 1889 because Columbia University refused to admit female students?

Barnard College was started by student activist Annie Nathan Meyer and named after a Columbia president. Its graduates receive diplomas signed by the presidents of both schools.

What is the bronze statue of a seated, robed woman on Columbia University's Low Library steps called?

Alma Mater, Latin for nourishing mother, has sat there since 1903. In May 1970 a bomb was planted on the statue during a wave of student protests.

Which bird is hidden in the robes of the bronze statue on Columbia University's Low Library steps?

An owl, an age-old symbol of wisdom, is tucked into the cloak near the figure's left leg. One professor argued it was really a nod to the sculptor's college fraternity.

Which color did Columbia University take from its oldest student society to pair with white?

Light blue came from the rosettes of the Philolexian Society, while white came from its rival, the Peithologian. The shade is now simply called Columbia blue.

Which traditional symbol of Columbia University tops the scepter held by a famous campus statue?

A crown stayed Columbia's emblem long after the Revolution ended royal rule, and a student Shakespeare troupe on campus still performs under its name.

Which sport was Columbia University playing at Baker Field in 1939 in America's first televised sporting event?

Baseball made its television debut when NBC broadcast a Columbia home game in May 1939. The first televised football game followed that September, also a college contest.

Which literary movement took shape when Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg met around Columbia University in 1944?

The Beat Generation grew out of friendships made in and around the campus, where Kerouac had arrived on a football scholarship. William Burroughs and Lucien Carr were part of the same circle.

Which future Supreme Court justice left Harvard for Columbia Law School and graduated joint first in her class?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg moved when her husband took a job in New York, after Harvard's dean refused to let her finish her degree from afar. She later became Columbia Law's first tenured woman.

Which Nobel physicist left Europe for Columbia University and joined America's first fission experiment?

Enrico Fermi chose Columbia from five university job offers and joined the 1939 experiment in the basement of Pupin Hall. His reactor research later moved to Chicago.

Which billionaire investor enrolled at Columbia Business School in 1950 to study under Benjamin Graham?

Warren Buffett applied only after Harvard Business School rejected him, then built his approach on Graham's idea of buying undervalued stocks. He left with a master's in economics in 1951.

Which annual Columbia University student musical, first staged in 1894, once featured songs by Richard Rodgers?

The Varsity Show began as a fundraiser for Columbia's athletic teams and still satirizes campus life every spring. Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart wrote the 1920 edition, Fly With Me.

What does Columbia College call the set of required courses, begun in 1919, that all its students take?

The Core Curriculum began with a peace-issues course after World War I, reworked from a war-issues class the US Army had commissioned from Columbia in 1917.

Which unusual challenge must Columbia College students pass before receiving their diplomas?

A swimming test stands between every Columbia College student and graduation, though a semester of beginners' swimming lessons can stand in for it.

Which planned building in a Harlem park helped set off the 1968 student occupation of Columbia University?

A gymnasium planned for city parkland drew fury because its design gave the Harlem community a separate lower level. The protests got the project scrapped.

Which broadcasting technology did Columbia University professor Edwin Howard Armstrong invent in the 1930s?

FM radio was born in Philosophy Hall, where Armstrong kept a self-financed laboratory and owned his patents outright. He taught at Columbia for the rest of his life.

Which Ivy League rival did Columbia's football team defeat in 1988 to end a 44-game losing streak?

Princeton lost 16–13 after missing a late field goal, ending a run in which Columbia went 47 games without a win. It was the team's first victory in its four-year-old stadium.

Which West Coast university did Columbia's football team upset 7–0 to win the 1934 Rose Bowl?

Stanford fell to a trick play called KF-79, in which the quarterback hid the ball and slipped it to Al Barabas for the game's only score. It ranks among the Rose Bowl's biggest upsets.

Which US president entered Columbia Law School in 1904 but dropped out after passing the bar exam?

Franklin Roosevelt never finished the degree, and neither did his distant cousin Theodore a generation earlier. Columbia Law gave both presidents honorary law degrees in 2008.

Which Columbia University president of 43 years shared a Nobel Peace Prize and has the main library named after him?

Nicholas Butler ran Columbia from 1902 to 1945, the longest presidency in its history. He shared the 1931 peace prize with social reformer Jane Addams.

On the grounds of which Manhattan church was Columbia University established in 1754?

Trinity Church provided the grounds where classes began in July 1754 under the college's first president, Samuel Johnson. The campus has moved uptown twice since then.

Which ancient Roman landmark lent many of its features to Columbia University's Low Memorial Library?

The Pantheon shaped the look of the building, though its dome also echoes Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda at the University of Virginia. It has held offices rather than books since 1934.

Which architecture firm behind New York's original Penn Station planned Columbia University's main campus?

McKim, Mead & White also designed the Brooklyn Museum, and partner Charles McKim personally drew the campus master plan and its domed centerpiece.

Which insect did Thomas Hunt Morgan breed at Columbia University to show that genes sit on chromosomes?

The fruit fly gave Morgan's lab in Schermerhorn Hall its nickname, the Fly Room. His discoveries there won him the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1933.

Which invention got its acronym name from a notebook entry by Columbia University graduate student Gordon Gould?

Laser first appeared in Gould's notebook as shorthand for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. He took the pages to a neighborhood store to have them notarized.

Which science-fiction author earned three Columbia University degrees, ending with a doctorate in 1948?

Isaac Asimov started at Seth Low Junior College, a Brooklyn branch of Columbia for qualified students who were kept out of Columbia College by unwritten ethnic quotas.

Which pioneering aviator took medical courses at Columbia University in 1919 before she learned to fly?

Amelia Earhart had been set to enter Smith College before choosing Columbia instead. She quit after a year to join her parents in California, where she took her first flying lesson.

Which Harlem Renaissance poet enrolled at Columbia University in 1921 to study engineering but soon dropped out?

Langston Hughes only got his father to pay for Columbia by agreeing to study engineering. He kept a B+ average but dropped out in 1922, having met racial prejudice from students and faculty.

Which field did Columbia University professor Franz Boas shape, training Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston?

Anthropology became his life's work at Columbia, where the German immigrant was made professor in 1899 and became a leading opponent of scientific racism.

Which indie rock band, fronted by Ezra Koenig, was formed by four Columbia University students in 2006?

Vampire Weekend grew out of a campus rap collaboration and played its first shows at Columbia, starting with a battle of the bands in Lerner Hall.

Which NFL team did Robert Kraft, the Columbia graduate whose name is on Columbia's football field, buy in 1994?

The New England Patriots sold out their entire 1994 season after the sale, a first for the franchise. Kraft had attended Columbia on an academic scholarship and served as class president.

On the eve of which final exam did Columbia University's marching band stage a midnight comedy show from 1975?

Organic chemistry gave the show its name, Orgo Night, when the band invaded the main library reading room for about forty-five minutes of jokes and music. Administrators barred it from the library in 2016.

Which chairman of the committee that drafted India's constitution earned a Columbia University doctorate in economics?

B. R. Ambedkar reached New York on a scholarship from the ruler of Baroda and came under the influence of philosopher John Dewey's pragmatism.

Which singer and actor earned his Columbia Law School degree in 1923 while playing in the NFL?

Paul Robeson transferred from NYU after feeling uncomfortable there, and suited up for the Akron Pros and the Milwaukee Badgers while he studied.

Which former Columbia student became the first Chief Justice of the United States and later governor of New York?

John Jay entered the college at 14. Each winter, students dressed as Continental Army soldiers carry a Yule log to the lounge of the campus hall that bears his name.

Which ancient people made Plimpton 322, the famous mathematical clay tablet in Columbia University's collection?

Babylonians wrote the tablet around 1800 BC, and its table of numbers suggests they understood the Pythagorean rule more than a thousand years before the Greek geometers.

Which Columbia-affiliated graduate school had philosopher John Dewey on its faculty for 26 years?

Teachers College was founded in 1887 and still has its own trustees and finances, even though Columbia confers its degrees.

What is the name of Columbia University's student newspaper, founded in 1877 and legally independent since 1962?

The Spectator, in full the Columbia Daily Spectator and Spec to its readers, had on its first editorial board William Barclay Parsons, who went on to build New York's first subway.

Which singer from a famous 1960s duo began an architecture degree at Columbia University, graduating in 1965?

Art Garfunkel switched to art history, sang with a campus a cappella group and competed for Columbia in tennis, skiing, fencing and bowling.