70 Fun Facts About Stanford

Stanford was founded in memory of Leland Jr., who died of what disease just before his 16th birthday?

He fell ill on a family tour of Europe and died in Florence in 1884; his parents decided their fortune would build a university instead.

Besides running a railroad and serving as a state governor, Leland Stanford held which national office?

He was one of the Big Four behind the Central Pacific and drove the ceremonial golden spike at Promontory Summit in 1869.

After their son's death, Leland Stanford told his wife that whose children 'shall be our children'?

The founding grant followed in November 1885, and for its first three decades the university charged no tuition at all.

Stanford's campus is nicknamed 'the Farm' because it was built on what?

The Palo Alto Stock Farm bred trotting horses; Leland Stanford's photographic study of a galloping horse there helped give birth to motion pictures.

The cornerstone was laid on 14 May 1887, a date chosen because it was what?

He would have turned nineteen; the university opened four and a half years later.

Which landscape architect drew up the master plan for the campus?

He had designed Central Park and the Cornell campus, and he talked the Stanfords out of a hillside site in favour of the flatlands.

The buildings of the Main Quad are built of which stone, under red tile roofs?

The buff walls, red roofs and arcades set the template that most later campus buildings still follow.

In what year did Stanford admit its first students?

It opened as coeducational and non-denominational, both unusual for the time, and Jane later capped female enrolment at 500.

How many students were there when the university opened on 1 October 1891?

They became known as the Pioneer Class, and one of them was a future president of the United States.

Who was Stanford's first president?

He was a leading ichthyologist who arrived in June 1891 and had to recruit an entire faculty in four months.

To whom did the Stanfords first offer the presidency in 1891, before he declined?

White had co-founded Cornell, which Olmsted had also laid out; the man he recommended ran Stanford for its first 22 years.

Herbert Hoover entered Stanford's first class despite failing every entrance exam except which subject?

He switched from mechanical engineering to earth science in his first year and graduated in 1895 into the teeth of a depression.

What did Herbert Hoover major in at Stanford?

He made his fortune as a mining engineer in Australia and China before politics, and became the 31st president in 1929.

In 1899 Jane Stanford added a rule that the number of women students should never exceed what?

She feared the university would become a women's college; the cap was reinterpreted as a ratio in 1933 and finally scrapped in 1973.

In 1901 Jane Stanford transferred roughly how much of her remaining wealth to the university?

That was nearly everything she had; the trustees had wanted to close the university temporarily and she refused.

Stanford's motto, 'Die Luft der Freiheit weht', is written in which language?

It was a favourite line of the first president, borrowed from the humanist Ulrich von Hutten.

What does Stanford's motto mean in English?

During both world wars there was pressure to drop the German wording; the university kept it.

Which 1906 event caused major damage to the young campus?

Memorial Church and the giant Memorial Arch were wrecked; the church was rebuilt, the arch never was.

Stanford's school of medicine was established in 1908 by acquiring which San Francisco institution?

The school stayed in San Francisco until 1959, when it moved to the main campus.

Herbert Hoover founded the Hoover Institution in 1919 to preserve material relating to what?

He had run food relief in Belgium and Europe during the war and wanted the documents saved; it grew into a major think tank.

Hoover Tower's design was inspired by a cathedral tower in which Spanish city?

At 285 feet it is the tallest building on campus, with a 48-bell carillon and an observation deck 250 feet up.

Hoover Tower was completed in 1941 to mark what occasion?

Architect Arthur Brown Jr. also designed San Francisco City Hall and Coit Tower.

Roughly how large is Stanford's main campus?

That is about 13 square miles, making it one of the largest campuses in the United States, with a 1,200-acre biological preserve on top.

Stanford's Hopkins Marine Station, owned since 1892, is in which coastal town?

It sits next door to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and is the oldest marine lab on the US Pacific coast.

How long is the linear accelerator at SLAC, the longest in the world?

Established in 1962, the lab has produced Nobel-winning particle discoveries and hosted the first web server in North America.

Which Stanford professor and provost is called the 'Father of Silicon Valley'?

Two of his students were Bill Hewlett and David Packard; in the 1950s he set up the Stanford Industrial Park on university land.

Eight of William Shockley's employees quit in 1957 to found which rival company?

The 'traitorous eight' included Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who later left again to found Intel.

Silicon Valley takes its name from the key ingredient in what?

The name was popularised by a 1971 newspaper series; before the chip firms arrived the valley was famous for apricots and prunes.

In what year did Stanford alumni Bill Hewlett and David Packard found Hewlett-Packard?

They started in a Palo Alto garage with $538; the garage is now a California historical landmark billed as the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

Which company began in January 1996 as a research project by two Stanford PhD students?

Larry Page and Sergey Brin's project was called BackRub; the university held the patent on PageRank and made hundreds of millions from the shares it received.

Jerry Yang and David Filo co-founded which company in 1994 while at Stanford?

It began as 'Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web', a list of favourite links kept in a campus trailer.

Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim and Scott McNealy co-founded which company in 1982?

The name came from the Stanford University Network, the campus workstation project Bechtolsheim had built as a graduate student.

Which networking company's hardware was developed in 1984 by Stanford's Leonard Bosack and Sandy Lerner?

They were a married couple running the computer science and business school systems and needed a way to make the two networks talk.

Which Stanford alumnus co-founded Nvidia in 1993?

He did his master's in electrical engineering there and later gave the university $30 million for an engineering centre that bears his name.

Stanford alumnus Reed Hastings co-founded which company in 1997?

He has a master's in computer science from Stanford; the company began by mailing DVDs in red envelopes.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, both Stanford alumni, co-founded which app in 2010?

Systrom had interned at Odeo, the company that became Twitter; Facebook bought the app for about $1 billion eighteen months after launch.

Peter Thiel and Ken Howery, both Stanford alumni, co-founded which payments company in 1998?

Thiel had founded the conservative Stanford Review as an undergraduate; the so-called PayPal Mafia went on to start Tesla, LinkedIn, YouTube and Yelp.

In a 2012 study, Stanford alumni's companies ranked where among the world's economies?

The Eesley–Miller survey put their revenues above $2.7 trillion a year, with some 5.4 million jobs created since the 1930s.

Russell and Sigurd Varian invented which microwave tube at Stanford in 1937?

It made airborne radar and later particle accelerators possible; the brothers' company, Varian Associates, was the first tenant of the Stanford Industrial Park.

Stanford Research Institute hosted one of how many original ARPANET nodes in 1969?

The first message on the network went from UCLA to SRI; it was supposed to say LOGIN and crashed after LO.

Which Stanford researcher co-created TCP/IP with Robert Kahn in 1973?

He is often called a father of the internet and later worked at Google as its 'chief internet evangelist'.

Stanley Cohen and Herbert Boyer were the first scientists to do what, founding genetic engineering?

Their 1973 recombinant DNA work led Boyer to co-found Genentech, and the Cohen-Boyer patents earned Stanford over $250 million.

Felix Bloch's nuclear magnetic measurements at Stanford underlie which medical imaging technology?

He shared the 1952 Nobel Prize in Physics for it and was later the first director-general of CERN.

Arthur Schawlow shared the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on what?

He co-wrote the 1958 paper that laid out how a laser could work, with his brother-in-law Charles Townes.

In what year was the Stanford prison experiment, later criticised as unethical, conducted?

It was scheduled to run two weeks and was shut down after six days.

Which president (1949–68) turned Stanford from a troubled regional school into an international powerhouse?

He and provost Terman used land leases and federal research money to build the modern university.

Stanford's team name refers to what?

It is the vivid red of the school colours, always singular; the university has no official mascot at all.

The Tree is officially the mascot of what?

It has been called one of America's most bizarre college mascots and is redesigned by each new student who wears it.

In what year did Stanford drop the 'Indians' name and symbol for its teams?

President Richard Lyman made the change after Native American students objected; the teams had used the name since 1930.

The winner of the Big Game against Cal takes custody of what?

The rivalry dates to 1892 and was played by the schools' rugby teams for a stretch in the early 1900s.

In what year was the first Big Game played?

Stanford's student manager for that first game was a young Herbert Hoover.

As of late 2025, roughly how many NCAA team championships had Stanford won, more than any other school?

The streak includes at least one team title in each of 49 consecutive academic years, plus 25 straight Directors' Cups from 1994–95.

What do students do at 'Full Moon on the Quad'?

Tradition says seniors welcome freshmen with a kiss under the first full moon of the year; the university now hands out mouthwash.

The 'Wacky Walk' is a tradition at which event?

Graduates enter Stanford Stadium in costume instead of a solemn procession, so the ceremony starts with dinosaurs and inflatable sumo suits.

The annual Mausoleum Party is held on which night, at the tomb of the Stanford family?

Leland Jr. and both his parents lie in the mausoleum, guarded by sphinxes, in the campus arboretum.

Big Game Gaieties is what kind of show?

Ram's Head Theatrical Society writes, composes and performs a new 90-minute musical every year in the week before the game.

White Memorial Fountain, installed in 1964, is known to students by what nickname?

Designed by Aristides Demetrios, it sits between the bookstore and the Old Union and is a prime spot for 'fountain hopping'.

'The Dish', a landmark in the foothills above campus, is what?

The 150-foot antenna was built in the 1960s and the loop trail around it is the campus's favourite running route.

The Cantor Arts Center holds one of the world's largest collections of which sculptor?

Around 200 works, including a full cast of The Gates of Hell, sit in and around the museum's outdoor sculpture garden.

Which architect designed the 1937 Hanna–Honeycomb House on the Stanford campus?

Built on a hexagonal grid, it is on the National Register of Historic Places along with the 1919 Lou Henry Hoover House.

What was Stanford's undergraduate acceptance rate, one of the lowest in the country, per US News?

Admitted students typically score 1520–1570 on the SAT, and the university runs a no-loan financial aid policy.

Roughly how large was Stanford's endowment as of August 2023?

It began in 1885 with about $20 million from the Stanfords, six years before a single class was taught.

Which Stanford alumnus served as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States?

He graduated first in his Stanford Law class of 1952; his classmate Sandra Day O'Connor later joined him on the Court.

Stanford has produced the second-highest number of what among all universities?

Only Harvard has more; the list runs from Hewlett and Packard through Page, Brin and Thiel to Jensen Huang.

Who became Stanford's 13th president in August 2024?

An economist and former dean of the business school, he took over after Tessier-Lavigne resigned over research-integrity findings.

What world first did Stanford establish on its Palo Alto land in 1951?

Its leases, along with the Stanford Shopping Center, helped stabilise the university's finances and seed Silicon Valley.

Which athletic league did Stanford join in 2024?

Stanford, Cal and SMU joined the ACC in 2024 after the Pac-12 collapsed; the Cardinal field teams in 36 varsity sports.

How large is Stanford's Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, used by wildlife biologists?

It lies west of the central campus in unincorporated San Mateo County, as does the SLAC accelerator.

Who designed White Memorial Fountain, 'The Claw', after winning a national competition?

It memorialises brothers William and John White of the class of 1949 and is the site of the student custom of fountain hopping.

Stanford's Lathrop Library holds one of the largest collections of what, with 540,000 volumes?

It replaced Meyer Library, which was demolished in 2015.