Tufts University

Tufts University was founded as Tufts College in 1852 in the Boston Metropolitan Area–suburb of Medford, north of Cambridge. The school was built under the auspices of the Universalist Church of America on 20 acres of land donated by businessman and philanthropist Charles Tufts. Today, the university also has a satellite campus located in downtown Boston.

When Charles Tufts first purchased the land, it was an undeveloped parcel on the top of a barren hill, and when his family asked him what he intended to do with it, he is said to have replied: “I will put a light on it.”

The college was built up piecemeal over the years. In 1893 a medical school began operation, with electrical, chemical, civil, and mechanical engineering schools all opening during the same decade. In 1933 the internationally renowned Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy was founded.

Women began to be admitted to Tufts College in 1893, while Jackson College for Women—a closely associated, but administratively separate, four-year, women’s liberal arts college—opened in 1910. In 2002, Jackson College was wholly absorbed by Tufts’s School of Arts and Sciences.

In 1954 the college was officially elevated to university status and its name changed accordingly. However, the school’s rapid growth into a major research university began particularly with the presidency of French scientist, Jean Mayer, beginning in 1976.

Tufts is associated with seven Nobel laureates, namely,

• Physicist, Rainer Weiss
• Chemist, Roderick MacKinnon
• Computed-tomography (CT) pioneer Allan MacLeod Cormack — physiology or medicine
• Economists, Eugene Fama & Paul Samuelson
• Egyptian-born international public servant, Mohamed ElBaradei — peace
• President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos — peace

Other distinguished Tufts-connected individuals include the following:

• Singer-songwriter, Tracy Chapman
• New York Times publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.
• TV personality, Meredith Vieira
• Showman and philanthropist, P.T. Barnum
• Actors, William Hurt, Peter Gallagher & Jessica Biel
• Psychologists, Robert J. Sternberg & Richard Alpert (Ram Dass)
• Mathematician and philosopher, Norbert Wiener
• Linguist, Ray Jackendoff
• Computer scientists, John Reif, Kathleen Fisher & Pierre Omidyar
• Cell biologist, Frederick Grinnell
• Evolutionary biologist, Sean B. Carroll
• Electrical engineer and inventor, Elihu Thomson
• Engineer and government administrator, Vannevar Bush
• Economist, Peter Navarro
• Historians, Gordon S. Wood & Jill Lepore
• Indian politician and former United Nations diplomat, Shashi Tharoor
• Former New Mexico governor, Bill Richardson
• Current US Representative, Dan Crenshaw
• Former US Senators, Daniel Patrick Moynihan & Scott Brown