Who founded Stanford University and why? The founding story of Stanford University

Leland Stanford is the owner of one of the first railroad companies of the US Gold Rush era and the Governor of California.

The Stanford Family amassed a fortune of $50 million (~1.4 billion today).

The Stanfords do not have children for 18 years after their marriage.

The family spent the Christmas period in Vienna at the beginning of 1883 and came to Istanbul in the following winter as guests of the Sultan to discuss the railway plan.

Amasa Leland Stanford (March 9, 1824 – June 21, 1893) was an American attorney, industrialist, philanthropist, and Republican Party politician from California. He served as the 8th Governor of California from 1862 to 1863 and represented the state in the United States Senate from 1885 until his death in 1893. He and his wife Jane founded Stanford University, named after their late son.

Young Lenand writes to his friend that he took a Bosphorus tour on a steamboat in the winter cold.

After his visit to Istanbul, Father Stanford returns to the USA, but young Leland continues his European tour.

However, Leland Jr. Stanford died of typhoid fever, which he caught in Florence in 1883, when he was 15 years old, during his European tour.

(The son of Leland and Jane, who had the same name as his father, died in 1884, 2 months before his 16th birthday, in Italy, where he was taken for treatment, due to the typhoid disease he contracted in Greece.)

The Stanfords lost their only child, born 18 years later, and are devastated.

Leland Stanford (1824-1893) and his wife Jane (1825-1905) visited the rector of Harvard.

When the Stanford family visited Harvard President Charles William Eliot (1834-1926), they were trying to decide what to do in memory of their son. 50-year-old Rector Eliot suggested they establish a university and said that 5 million dollars were needed to start. They also sought advice from administrators at Cornell, MIT, and Johns Hopkins.

Leland Stanford was not only one of the richest and most influential businessmen in the USA at that time... He was also a very well-known Republican Party senator.

Saying "All the children of California are our children now," Stanford founded Stanford University on their farm in Palo Alto with 40 million of their $50 million fortune (~$1.2 billion today).

Stanford was founded on March 9, 1885, with $20 million.

The school's first student, Herbert Hoover, became the 31st President of the United States.

The "Institute on War, Revolution, and Peace" at Stanford was founded by Herbert Hoover.

As of March 2020, Stanford has 83 Nobel Prizes, 28 Turing Awards, and 8 Fields Medals.

It has been calculated that the total of Stanford Alumni is the 7th economic power in the world.

Famous taxonomist David Starr Jordan was the founding president of Stanford University. He served for 22 years between 1891 and 1913.

Stanford was one of the first universities to open its doors to women. (before Harvard and Yale)