Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892.[14] In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment and the institution changed its name to honor his deceased father, Washington Duke.
Duke’s campus spans over 8,600 acres (3,500 hectares) on three contiguous sub-campuses in Durham as well as a marine lab in Beaufort. The main campus—designed largely by architect Julian Abele—incorporates Gothic architecture with the 210-foot (64-meter) Duke Chapel at the campus’ center and highest point of elevation. East Campus, home to all first-years, contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away is adjacent to the Medical Center. The university administers two concurrent schools in Asia, Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore (established in 2005) and Duke Kunshan University in Kunshan, China (established in 2013).
As of 2019, 13 Nobel laureates and 3 Turing Award winners have been affiliated with the university. Further, Duke alumni include 46[15] Rhodes Scholars and 25 Churchill Scholars. The university has produced the 5th highest number of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall Scholars of any American university between 1986 and 2015.[16] As of 2019, Duke holds a top-ten position in most national rankings,[17][18][19] and has been named the top college for graduate outcomes several years in a row having tied with Harvard University and Yale University.[20][21] Duke also has been recognized as one of the top three university employers, along with Stanford Universityand Harvard University.[22]
