Duke University

Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James Buchanan Duke established The Duke Endowment, at which time 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 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. The first-year-populated East Campus contains Georgian-style architecture, while the main Gothic-style West Campus 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away is adjacent to the Medical Center. Duke is the seventh-wealthiest private university in America with $11.4 billion in cash and investments in fiscal year 2014.

Duke's research expenditures in the 2014 fiscal year were $1.037 billion, the seventh largest in the nation. In 2014, Thomson Reuters named 32 of Duke's professors to its list of Highly Cited Researchers, making it fourth globally in terms of primary affiliations. Duke also ranks fifth among national universities to have produced Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall Scholars. Ten Nobel laureates and three Turing Award winners are affiliated with the university. Duke's sports teams compete in the Atlantic Coast Conference and the basketball team is renowned for having won five NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championships, most recently in 2015.

Duke is consistently included among the best universities in the world by numerous university rankings, and among the most innovative, according to a Reuters' survey. According to a Forbes study, Duke is ranked 11th among universities that have produced billionaires. In a New York Times corporate study, Duke's graduates were shown to be among the most sought-after and valued in the world, and Forbes magazine ranked Duke seventh in the world on its list of 'power factories' in 2012.