The University of Chicago (commonly referred to as UChicago, The U of C, or just Chicago) is a private, coeducational research university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was incorporated by oil magnate and benefactor John D. Rockefeller and the American Baptist Education Society in 1890; William Rainey Harper became its first president in 1891 and the first classes were held in 1892.
The University is affiliated with 82 Nobel Prize laureates. The university and its undergraduate college have a reputation of devotion to academic scholarship and intellectualism. Historically, the university has also been noted for its undergraduate core curriculum known as the Common Core pioneered by Robert Maynard Hutchins; for several influential academic movements and centers, such as the Chicago School of Economics, the Chicago School of Sociology, the Law and Economics movement in legal analysis, and several of the most prominent movements in anthropology; and for its role in developing modern physics leading to the world’s first man-made, self-sustaining nuclear reaction. The university is also home to the Committee on Social Thought, an interdisciplinary graduate research program, and to the largest university press in the United States. (more…)