When was rice university founded

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These were lofty and expensive aspirations. Although the endowment had grown significantly since , Lovett knew that he could not at once have the comprehensive university that he envisioned. He therefore had to emphasize initially only science and engineering. By September , when fifty-nine students assembled for classes on the new campus -- on a flat expanse of prairie just beyond the streets of Houston -- Rice had four buildings and an international faculty of remarkable distinction, a faculty that included Julian Huxley from Oxford in biology, Harold A.

Wilson from Cambridge in physics, and Griffith C. Evans of Harvard in mathematics. Although Rice grew rapidly for nearly two decades after , a lack of funds during the Depression forced retrenchments and kept Rice a small provincial college that emphasized science and engineering until World War II. Then, new leaders with far greater resources were able to initiate nearly three decades of sustained growth, approaching by the better-balanced university that President Lovett had envisioned in Thanks to income from oil fields acquired in and supported by an ambitious board of trustees, Lovett's successors, William V.

Houston and Kenneth S. Rice University also is a member of the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical facility in the world. Rice University was formed from an institute conceptualized by a wealthy citizen named William Marsh Rice. However, the institute was to be established after his death.

Following his death in , and some legal hurdles, work for the establishment of the institute began. Edgar Odell Lovett, a highly qualified mathematician and astronomer from Princeton University , was appointed as president.

In order to establish an institution of the highest standards, Lovett visited 78 institutions of higher learning located in various countries. With the ideas derived from these institutions, Lovett set the foundation for the new institution. Rice Institute was, at long last, established in September